


Shifts

by VeritySilvers



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Distrust, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 74,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeritySilvers/pseuds/VeritySilvers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herah does not like the Iron Bull, until she does.</p><p>Or, how a female mage Vashoth Inquisitor finds herself learning to trust a Ben-Hassrath Qunari mercenary captain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

## Prologue

It’s always the little things.

The big things, those she can carry.  She can square shoulders strong and muscled from staff-work, and know that they are sturdy enough to bear the weight of the decisions that rest there.  She has titles – has always _had_ titles – that act as yokes, at once tying her to her burdens and lessening the weight of them.  The titles shift with every twist her life takes, lying like a harness over her collarbones, each layer drooping heavy with expectations and responsibilities.

 _Retha-ah_ , she hears, in the clamor of childish voices; _Recruit_ and _Mage_ and _Saarebas_ , sometimes even _Bas Saarebas_ , spoken in the flat tones of soldiers and warriors and commanding officers.  _Lieutenant_ she hears with grudging respect; _Captain’s Pet_ with earned wariness and almost prideful glee.  _Tal-Vashoth_ is practical, blunt, obvious; foreign and familiar, insult and fact, at once incorrect and descriptive; something she’s lived with her whole life.

Now _Herald_ whispers against her throat in a way that should be feather-light but instead carries the weight of a faith she does not follow, amplified by the green light flashing from her palm.  _Inquisitor_ all but chokes her, a collar of wrought iron and war, and it bears the weight of an army and a stronghold.

She relies on the titles.  They can carry the big things, the way Herah Adaar on her own cannot.  Herah Adaar might mourn lost soldiers, might show fear, might flinch away from the hard decisions.  But a Tal-Vashoth and Saarebas can tough it out against the odds, a Lieutenant might order a unit to shore up a weak position knowing there will be losses, an Inquisitor might order a man’s death for dereliction of duty.

The titles carry the big decisions and make them bearable, so that being merely Herah Adaar is possible.

It’s not that the decisions rest lightly against her.  She mourns when her soldiers die, when her mercenaries are not properly ransomed, when friends go into battle at her order and returned maimed or not at all.  She rages when she must choose between two impossible situations, when she is drawn into conflicts she’d planned on avoiding, when those she swore to protect are mistreated and disrespected.  And she feels the terrible solemn weight of lives hanging in the balance at her order when she stares at her war table and reads reports and determines how to handle issues that affect the whole of Thedas.

The big decisions exhaust her, leave her wringed out and empty, and only the strength of her titles – of who she is, of why the decisions rest with her and no other – keep her from collapsing under their weight.  She leans on her positions, on her titles, on the rank that makes this burden hers, and if the decisions leave her tired and heartsore, they do not lay her low.

It is the little things that manage to cut her down instead.


	2. Chapter 1

## 1

She eats her evening meals in the tavern, at the bar.  The tavern is her refuge.  The bartender is quiet and surly, and more importantly, there’s a very limited menu.  She can narrow her decisions down to the same four or five daily options, and the dwarf will serve her with the contemptuous, casual motions of a life-long barman.  The Iron Bull’s Chargers have taken over the first floor room, which means that most of Skyhold’s residents drink upstairs, where they form their own little society; they send representatives down for drinks, and rarely think to bother Herah where she sits at the bar.  When they do – if they do – they ask for little: a few words, perhaps a half-smile, her best wishes for a successful endeavor, and they return to their friends satisfied.

The Chargers are loud, as boisterous as their leader’s laugh and uncouth as only a mercenary band can be.  It’s comforting, in a way: Bull’s Chargers are far more diverse than the Valo-kas, far louder, far more interested in a ruckus.  But there are similarities that are undeniable and all but pervasive across every mercenary company she’s ever seen – insults slurred over ale that are more endearments than barbs, jokes that mask truth and fears, comradeship born of trials and fear, professionalism masked by boasts and taunts.  There are the silent ones, the crazy ones, the rowdy ones, the organized sergeant to keep them all in line and to shout at them to shape up whenever something slips too far out of the norm.  There are the ones who get along, the ones who are probably sleeping together, the ones with secrets and the ones who despise the world.  The conversation is everything she’s heard a hundred times before in a hundred other taverns and in a hundred forward camps.

It’s comforting, at least if she ignores their leader where he sits along the back wall.  She likes the Chargers: she’d like them if only because they remind her of her own company, but she is honest enough to admit that they have their own merits.  They’re good at their jobs, though a surly competitive streak in her disdains to accept their claim of being the best ( _surely_ , she thinks, _the Valo-kas…_ ).  Instead, Herah admits to herself that she’s impressed by them, and she comes to eat among them because they remind her enough of who she was before this whole mess that she can relax for a precious few minutes with her meal.

The Iron Bull had approached her about a fortnight into her habit.  “So what’s the deal, boss?” he asked her with his usual bluntness.  He crossed his massive arms, looking down at her with a narrowed eye.  “Something going on with my boys I should know about?  Or do you have some other reason to come spy on us every night?”

Herah does not like the Iron Bull.

He’s Ben-Hassrath, first of all.  She almost wishes he hadn’t told her outright when they’d first met: it had taken her a great deal of effort to keep her face calm and her tone even after that revelation.  She’s met any number of Tal-Vashoth mercenaries, and had been prepared for that when she’d gone out to the Storm Coast to meet him.  But she’s met a few Ben-Hassrath, too, and the scar that starts at the corner of her mouth itches whenever she sees the Iron Bull because of those other meetings.

And he’s too tall, too broad.  She isn’t used to looking up at others, nor is she used to feeling physically vulnerable.  The Iron Bull is Qunari, and she’s certainly met other Qunari, followers of the Qun and Vashoth and Tal-Vashoth alike.  She’s not particularly large, as far as her race goes: average size, she supposes, for a female.  She’s used to the men in the Valo-kas being taller than her; she’s even used to other women of her kind occasionally besting her in size.  But the Iron Bull is bigger than any other Qunari she’s met, and she dislikes knowing that he holds that as an advantage over her.

His size is all the worse because he is so hard for her to read, and so she is left with the uncomfortable notion that she will only notice too late should he turn on her.  He’s laughing one moment and serious the next, and so often everything he does seems to be revealed later to be deliberate even when in the moment it seems careless.  He’d taken her out with him around Skyhold after they’d first arrived, deliberately allowing her a glimpse into how his mind worked as he gave her a chance to walk unknowingly among her soldiers.  It had been an act of either trust or arrogance, she’d thought then: he was either loyal enough to reveal how he thought to her, or he was confident enough in his own skills that giving her that edge over him didn’t worry him.

She’s taken him on enough assignments to value his skill with a blade and his tactical mind.  He’s a strong fighter, but he’s also intelligent; he leads well, and inspires loyalty.  Worse still, he’s observant, and she fully believes he’s calculating.

All skills, she will admit freely, which would make him an excellent ally to cultivate – but a very dangerous enemy.  And Herah has had one too many encounters with Ben-Hassrath to let her guard down around him.

So when he had confronted her about her eating habits, she had deliberately kept her arms at her side.  She wanted to cross them over her stomach, to hug them to her body in reassurance, but a mage is more dangerous with her hands free.  The scar on her lip stretched as she twisted her mouth into something akin to amusement.  “You tell me,” she invited.  “All I care about is a place to eat in peace.”

The Iron Bull stared at her for a long moment, and she fought the urge to glare back.  Instead, she met his eyes – eye – evenly, and set her chin.  “Why?” he asked after that moment of silence.

She did not pretend to misunderstand him.  Instead, she shrugged.  “I’m used to taverns and mercenaries,” she told him.  “I’m not used to _that_.”  And she swept an arm behind her towards the stone stairway leading up to Skyhold’s great hall, the throne that sat at the head of tables where she would be honored and made welcome and served the best food in the fortress.

The Iron Bull had considered her for a long moment, and then he’d snorted.  “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to eat with them, I might as well introduce you.”

He’d taken her drinking with them, and she had names now to fit to the faces, bits of stories to flitter through her mind as she sees this one order a round or that one steal a bite from another’s plate.  He must have said something to them permitting her to be present, because Herah eats among them undisturbed: she sits at the bar, and the dwarf serves her plain tavern fare and ale like she was a basic recruit again.

But she suspects that he said something more to his Chargers.  They’re careful around her: Krem, the Tevinter sergeant, barks reprimands at any of the company who get too rowdy too close to her, and he calls her “Your Worship” without the faintest trace of irony, just the inflection of a soldier being professionally polite.  She doesn’t mind, really.  She’s got a soft spot for Krem, and has ever since she watched him very calmly mop the floor with his subordinates in an all-out brawl of a barfight that had started over some comment about nugs.  They’d all been most of the way to shitfaced, and the Tevinter mercenary had watched it develop with knowing and resigned eyes, finished his drink as the fistfight started, and proceeded to wade into the melee and lay waste to all comers.  When it was over, the Iron Bull had been roaring with laughter from his chair against the wall, half his company strewn about his lieutenant mumbling about unfairness and holding their heads, and Krem had simply shaken his head, stretched out his hands, and gone back for another ale.

Herah had taken up that role herself too many times to mention, knocking sense into her own people and quelling any unruly challengers, and so Herah had only smirked into her own ale and decided that she like Krem.  She goes to him now whenever she needs to work with the Chargers.  He’s professional, but more, he’s comfortable: he starts suggesting missions for them to her, and once or twice she catches herself on the other end of his sly barbed comments when he hears him relaying her commands to his fellow Chargers.  It warms her somehow, to know that she’s earned that familiarity, and she takes it in stride as the compliment she knows it is rather than the insults someone foreign to mercenary behavior might assume.

The Iron Bull is the only flaw in the perfection of her tavern hideout.  She just doesn’t trust him: Ben-Hassrath, her scar reminds her, cannot be trusted.  Besides, he watches her more often than not.  His men and women bicker and eat and drink and shout, marking the first floor as their territory by sprawling across benches and tables and leaving armor and weaponry prominently displayed in inconvenient places. Krem keeps a practiced eye on them, as a good sergeant should: he sits where he can see both the door and his crew.

The Iron Bull sits in the back, his broad shoulders pressed against the wall, where he can keep an eye not on them but on her.

He slouches, indolent, as though he is half-asleep and uncaring of what’s going on around him.  Herah had thought it coincidence, at first, that he was always sitting there while she ate.  Then she’d begun to notice that he moved there on her arrival, abandoning his drinks and his company to claim the seat she thinks of as his throne.

It unnerves her.  She tries not to show it, but she’s fairly sure he’s picked up on it.  The fifth time she’d come into the tavern to find him laughing with his Chargers, she’d deliberately stood her ground as he noticed her arrival.  She is not a coward: she stood still as he got to his feet, leaving a half-eaten meal behind as he deserted his troops to move to that seat in the back.  She made no effort to hide that she watched him, and the Iron Bull settled into his chair with a sardonic twist of his lip, a lift of an eyebrow, a little smirk that seemed to challenge her: _Yes,_ he all but told her out loud.  _I **am**_ _watching you.  Got a problem with that?_

She’d met his gaze coolly, gave her chin a little lift – more for her own mental fortitude than to counter his smirk with defiance – and looked away to take her spot at the bar. 

This is the one spot in Skyhold where she can relax – where she can be Herah rather than _Herald_ and _Inquisitor_ – and she refuses to let her fear of the Iron Bull steal that from her.  He is annoying – a fly in the ointment – but she will not let him ruin her one retreat.

She goes to the tavern in the coolness of an early summer night, stomach rumbling, heart hurting, and mind overwhelmed.  She’s spent the better part of the past six hours in the war room with her advisors: casualty reports and new information and troop positions, orders debated and fleshed out, certain death averted here, something little more than suicide ordered there. 

Herah is exhausted.  Her advisors are as well, she knows: it had not been an easy session.  Josephine had offered to send to the kitchens for meals for them, when she had realized how late it was, and it had been Cullen who gently suggested that they needed to distance themselves from the lives riding on their shoulders.  “We can reconvene tomorrow,” he’d said, and Herah had all but slumped in relief at the reprieve.

Still, her mind is running through the decisions weighed and made as she approaches the tavern, wearily guessing and double-guessing at information, desperate to try to save as much as possible of this mess of a war she suddenly finds herself directing, and because she is just so tired, she doesn’t notice that the ruckus of the tavern is anything but the usual until she opens the door and finds herself staring at a celebration.

It _is_ a celebration, her stunned mind realizes, as people notice she’s standing in the doorway.  It’s more than just the Chargers in the downstairs room.  There are soldiers she doesn’t recognize, servants in their best clothes, merchants and scouts and builders and craftsmen, too many people crowded into the tavern for her to see a clear space at the bar.  They’re laughing, dancing, shouting, flirting – a party, her tired brain notices, and there are decorations tacked to the rafters and a home-made banner proclaiming it a six months to the day after the Inquisition’s escape from Haven.

She is staring at the banner, her tired brain wondering why the hell anyone would want to celebrate what was, at best, a successful retreat, when the crowd seems to notice her all at once.

“Inquisitor!” they roar, separate voices shouting in delight at her: “Herald!” they call, or “Your worship!”  It’s all mixed in as a giant wave of welcome, of adulation, of eagerness.

She flinches, but the crowd is already surging forward to encompass her, to draw her into the tavern and to honor her. 

“Here, here, try this ale, it was special-made just for today –”

“No, no, she’ll want food – where’s the cake?”

“Not the cake first; real food –”

“Isn’t there any roast left?  Why don’t we find –”

“There’s a chicken roast, Inquisitor, and there’s pork, or do you want some of the pickled fish from Antiva, or maybe –”

“Wine, Herald, or ale, or beer?  Or no, maybe some of the hard stuff…”

The voices meld together, and she’s tired enough that the faces do too: tan human and pale elf and ruddy dwarf, a blur of flesh and glimpses of gleaming white teeth and a babble of noise that is too difficult for her to pick individual words from.  Herah is tired, overwhelmed and very nearly desperate; the faces and words and laughter swim around her, hot and stuffy in the tavern’s suddenly too-small space, and just as she’s about to take a determined step backwards to bolt for the exit, politeness be damned, a calloused hand grips her bare elbow.

“Glad you’re finally here, your worship,” Krem’s voice says loudly – too loudly, in a way that makes it seem as though he’s reading from a script.  “Come on then, clear the way – we’ve saved you a seat.  Come on, out of the way.”

Krem’s voice isn’t particularly deep; it’s a kind of rusty contralto.  Raised, it sounds almost gruff, the Tevinter accent clipped.  It lends him authority, so that the crowds do part for him, and he’s able to half-shove, half-drag Herah across the tavern floor and all but push her down into a seat beside his Captain.

“There,” he says at the end of it, and shifts his feet enough to plant himself solidly between her and the crowds behind her.  “Sorry about that, your worship.  It was late enough we didn’t think you’d show.”

“It’s been a long day,” Herah manages, and she finds that she’s slumping back against the wall, almost a mimic of the overlarge Qunari sitting beside her.  He’s eyeing her sharply, his whole expression fixed in attentive interest, and she’s too tired to care that he might be somehow seeing her secrets, her exhaustion, her sorrow. 

“Yeah, I can see that,” the Iron Bull murmurs, and at the rumble of his voice, Herah winces, shuts her eyes. 

“I can find you some dinner, if you like,” Krem suggests.  His voice is hesitant, almost.  “There’s chicken or some pork roast, and there are two or three types of different meat pies – some little savory tarts, some cake, loads of food – just tell me what you want and I’ll bring it.”

_Just tell me what you want and I’ll bring it._

The words ring in Herah’s head, bounce off her closed eyelids and echo in the blackness of her mind, and Herah suddenly has to resist the urge to laugh wildly.

She wants to erase the past six months everyone here is celebrating.  She wants to erase six more months before that, to go back to when she was nothing more than a Valo-kas mercenary, when the worst decisions she had to make only affected her own little unit of soldiers in the company, when she was accosted only for being one of Shokrakar’s favorites and not because she was the Herald of some human deity. 

“Your worship?” Krem asks again, even more hesitantly.  “What do you want to eat?”

He’s being kind.  Tears burn at her closed eyes, and Herah opens them to blink the tears back.  Krem is looking at her with mild concern and determined courtesy; Herah doesn’t dare turn her head to the left to find out what the Iron Bull’s expression betrays as he watches her struggle not to break down, because certainly he’s observant enough to notice.  She opens her mouth to tell Krem what she’d like for dinner – and finds, somehow, that she can’t utter a word.

It’s not a difficult decision, the rational part of her brain knows.  There really aren’t that many options – chicken, pork, fish, the little savory meat pies the kitchens make so well, probably some cakes and sweets for the celebration.  But she finds that her brain can’t settle on anything.  It spins between her choices, fracturing and glancing off everything; she’s spent all afternoon making decisions, and this seems to be the last one, the one she just can’t handle despite the simplicity.  Even just deciding what she wants to eat for dinner is too much.

She shuts her mouth, and shuts her eyes.  She lifts a hand to rub at them to hide the tears again threatening, and tries to swallow past the lump in her throat to say something, anything, to make this whole mess just go away.

Instead, a gruff voice from her left says, “Bring her out some of the pork roast, Krem, and as many of those little hand pies you can find.  Some cake, too, and those little glazed fruit bits and some ale – and none of that watered down crap they’re serving; she’ll want the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” Krem says with renewed vigor.  “Right away, chief.”

Herah, to her horror, sniffs.

“Hey,” the Iron Bull says, and his voice is astonishingly gentle.  A large hand comes down on her shoulder, grips there companionably.  “Long day, I guess.”

She doesn’t want him touching her.  The scar on her lip pulls, and the flesh under his hand all but shudders, super-sensitive to the heat of his hand, the grip of his fingers, the rough callouses lying in a strip along the top of his palm.  She’s always worn Antaam-saar, even in Skyhold; never before has she thought about how much skin it leaves exposed. 

She doesn’t say anything, though, fighting to swallow back her tears, fighting to regain her composure, to push back the spike of crawling fear and awareness his hand on her skin has brought into being.  The Iron Bull’s thumb sweeps up from her collarbone to her shoulder, then back down.  Goosebumps flare in its wake, and he squeezes her shoulder and releases her.

“Long day,” she manages.  She rubs at her eyes fiercely, commanding tears not to fall, and takes a deep breath.  She drops her hand, orders herself to remember her courage, and opens her eyes.  She takes another deep breath, and lifts her chin as she turns to face him.  “Too long.”

He is staring at her with something uncomfortably close to pity in his eye.  “I saw a couple of birds leaving Red’s tower this afternoon,” he muses, and she is reminded of one of the reasons why she doesn’t like him: he’s too observant.  “That was hours ago.  If you’ve been stuck in the war room since then…”

She is too tired to care that she doesn’t particularly trust him.  “Since midday,” she says, and hauls in a breath of too-warm air.  “Like I said, a long day.”

“No shit,” he says mildly, and he shifts back into his seat.  “No wonder you’re burned out.”

“I’m not burned out,” she counters, desperate to show her strength.  “Just tired.”

He snorts, and is silent.  Krem steps into that silence with a plate.  “Here,” he says, shoving it at her.  “I’ve got Dalish after the good ale, but there’s a line – it’ll be a minute.”

Herah takes the plate, and before she can muster up some semblance of gratitude, Krem turns back into the fray and melts away.  So instead she looks down at the food on her plate: mouthwatering, all of it, and it smells like spices and roast meat and everything best in the world.

Everything looks delicious, and her stomach is rumbling, but she can’t seem to do more than stare at the food.

“Do you want to start with the pork roast or the pies?” the Iron Bull asks quietly from beside her.

She opens her mouth to answer, and her brain stutters to a halt.

He must read the stricken look on her face as she shuts her mouth, because when he speaks, he’s matter-of-fact.  “It happens to everyone in charge of things sooner or later,” he says.  “Too many life-or-death decisions, too many important things, just too much at once.  You can only decide so much – after a while, your mind is just done with deciding anything.”

“No,” she says, and she dislikes the weakness in her voice, so she firms it.  “No.  I’m the Inquisitor.  It’s my job –”

“- to decide the fate of the world, blah blah blah.”  His lips twist into what is definitely a mocking grin.  “I get it, boss.  Preaching to the choir.  You’ve got some heavy stuff on those shoulders.  You’re allowed to need a break every now and then.”

She can’t argue with that, so she stays silent.

She’s too tired to do much more than that, and a hand that isn’t hers reaches onto her plate to pick up a little savory pie.  It’s crimped into the shape of a half-moon, and the flaky crust crumbles against the Iron Bull’s fingers, bits sticking to his skin as he offers it to her.  “Here,” he says.  “This one first.”

Numbly, she takes it from him.  She eats almost mechanically, chewing and swallowing with only the briefest appreciation for what is surely an exemplary pie created especially for a celebration.  When she’s done, he points to a little meat tart on her plate.  “That one,” he says.

She doesn’t have enough energy to argue.  She lets him pick out what food she eats, and she follows his order obediently enough.  She’d worry over it, if she wasn’t so tired, but at the end, when she’s staring at a nearly-empty plate, she finds she’s nearly grateful for his help.

“Last one,” the Iron Bull says, and he almost sounds jovial.  He plucks the candied slice of pear off of her plate, and holds it delicately between fingers that dwarf it.  “This one comes with a price.”

She’s grateful for his aid, yes, and weary enough to admit she’s glad he offered it.  But she’s not exhausted enough to not glare at him, nor to stop the sudden stab of apprehension that causes her eyes to fly from the candied fruit in his fingers up to his face.

He’s gone suddenly serious, and he doesn’t flinch when she demands, “What price?”

“You even get like this again,” the Iron Bull says seriously, “you come here, and you let me know.  Before,” and he emphasizes the word, “it gets to the point where you can’t even figure out what you want to eat.”

Something like shame burrows through her insides.  That a Ben-Hassrath, of all people, knows her well enough to see her exhaustion, to understand her weariness, and to reach out in concern to help her… 

“I don’t trust you,” she blurts, instead of anything else she might have said.

“Yeah,” the Iron Bull agrees.  “I know you don’t.”  He flicks the candied fruit in his fingers, delicately rolling it from side to side.  “Bad past experiences, I’d guess.  That’s an interesting scar you’ve got there, boss.”

Her lip burns where the scar crosses it, and she presses her lips together to glare at him.  He’s almost amused.  “You do this thing when you’re uncomfortable where you lift your chin and your eyes go all – never mind.”  And he shifts in his chair, looks away for a minute.  When he looks back at her, his voice is lower.  “Look, you trust my Chargers.  You like Krem.  Hell, you take me out on all these expeditions, tromping all around to deal with the Rifts and the like.  But you don’t trust me.  Why not?”

“You’re Ben-Hassrath,” she retorts automatically.

He just waves that aside with the hand holding the fruit piece.  “Yeah, yeah, but that’s not it.  Or not only it.”   He eyes her skeptically.  “There’s something else.”

“There’s really not,” she maintains, and to prove it, she adds, “The last Ben-Hassrath I met bolted me to the floor, threatened to cut off my horns, and tried to sew my mouth shut.”

He blows out a breath; she can’t tell if it’s surprise, annoyance, or something unrelated to either.  He eyes her again, and there’s something new in the gaze, something different, and she wonders uneasily if she’s somehow unknowingly told him something important.  “Huh,” he says, and he does sound a bit intrigued.  “You know the ones assigned to hunt down mages are supposed to kill them, not bring them back as Saarebas.”  He eyes her head, where her horns rise out of her pale hair and curl back towards her ears.  “Can’t say I’m surprised, though.  What happened to him?”

“I set him on fire,” she says shortly, and at that, he does laugh, long and loudly enough that heads turn even against the chaos of the party to look at them.

“Adaar,” he says when he is done laughing.  “Of course you did.”  He shakes his head, and shows her the fruit piece again.  “What will it take for you to trust me?”

“I could set you on fire,” she suggests, only a little dryly.

He laughs again, and she finds her lips twitching towards a smile despite herself.  “Yeah, well, I think I’d like to avoid that one, if it’s all the same to you,” he says.  “Look.  We’re on the same side for now, you and I.”

“And you’ll tell me if that changes, I’m sure,” and this time the sarcasm drips from her voice like poison.

He tosses the piece of pear, catches it.  “I’ve been honest about everything else,” he points out.

She wants to argue with that, but can’t: she hasn’t caught him in a lie yet.  So she only glares at him, catching herself as she lifts her chin and stopping the motion the moment she realizes he’s aware of that habit.  Still, he picks up on the aborted movement; the Iron Bull smirks.  “How about a trade, instead?”

“I don’t see how that’s any better than a price.”

“No, no,” and he looks distant, for a moment.  “Trades are always better.  Prices aren’t equal; trades are fairer.  How about this: you get like this again, you come here and let me know.  And in return, if it turns out that I’m not on your side, I’ll kill you clean.”

“Such a kindness,” she snarls back at him.

The bleakness in his eyes as he regards her is new.  “Yeah,” he says quietly, and to her shock, he reaches across with the hand not holding that stupid piece of candied fruit, and touches the corner of her mouth.  “I think it would be.”

His finger is warm, the pad of it blunt and softer than she’d expect as it trails along the faded path of her scar.  The scar is old, and long since healed, but it stretches from the corner of her mouth, down across the edge of her lips, carving down beneath her lower lip before abruptly curving back along her jawline towards her ear.  His finger traces the scar lightly, and she feels the faint pressure lift when he reaches the end of the scar halfway along her jaw.

He takes his hand away, unapologetic for the touch, and Herah understands. 

If he’s ordered to kill her, she thinks, he will.  And if he’s ordered to capture her, to torture her, to sew her lips shut and carve away her horns, to break her and bind her and make her into something she’s not… he’ll kill her, instead.

It’s an ugly, twisted declaration of respect.  Of loyalty, in some ways.  It’s unequal and unvarnished, a stark promise, and Herah finds, oddly enough, that she values it.  It makes her trust him, in a way pretty words and endless polite gestures never would.

It takes her a minute to respond, to swallow down a dry throat and find something to say back to him.  She has to look away from him, from that single eye that is so sharp, and her eyes focus on his broad fingers, on the slice of candied pear he still holds so carefully with them.

“I want the fruit, too,” she says when she’s able.

The Iron Bull looks away from her at that, and laughs.  “A hard bargain, boss,” he says, and the tension drains away with his laughter.  He slides the candied pear once more between his fingers, and then he hands it to her.  “But you’ve got a deal.”

The slice of candied pear is warm from being held for so long, slightly sticky from where the sugar has melted against his fingers.  Still, she brings it to her lips with a half-smile, and lets the tart juice of the fruit spread across her tongue as she bites into it.  The sugar melts in her mouth, sweetening the taste, and Herah savors the treat.

“I’ve made worse bargains, I suppose,” she says, and leans back against the wall, mirroring his posture.  She doesn’t look at him: she can extend to him that much trust, now, to look away without worry.

His chuckle is low and rich, and she dislikes that she likes the sound of it.  “Haven’t we all?” he murmurs, and before she can puzzle out what that means, Krem and Dalish arrive with tankards of ale and a swell of new conversation.

The next night, when she goes to the tavern for her supper, the Iron Bull is in the middle of teasing Krem fiercely when she arrives.  Krem is giving back as good as he gets, mocking his Captain with acerbic fond wit.  When Herah steps into the room, though, both they and the rowdy crowd of Chargers around them still. 

Herah stops just within the doorway, and watches the Iron Bull clap an enormous hand against Krem’s back – she’s impressed Krem doesn’t flinch – and then lurch up to his feet with the grace of a large man who knows his strength.  He leaves the table, where his Chargers are already ignoring his absence to turn their attention to the tattooed Dalish woman, and he makes his way to the back of the tavern.  His chair is there – his throne, Herah thinks wryly - and the Iron Bull settles into place, to all appearances content to slouch back and relax.

Herah watches him, and when he’s comfortable, he looks up to meet her eyes.  He gives her a grin, little more than a twitch of his lips as his Chargers shout with wild laughter over Dalish’s story, and then he gestures at the bar, where the dwarven bartender is already dishing up her supper.

He’s not watching _her_ , Herah realizes.  He’s watching everything else: he’s standing sentinel, guarding the room, sitting where he can see all angles and keep an eye on everything so that she can sit at the bar in peace with her back safely to the door.

The revelation is a surprise and a relief, and Herah eyes him thoughtfully for a moment.  Her scar itches, and she remembers the feel of a finger against it in place of a bone needle.  After a moment, she gives the Iron Bull a nod, and makes her way to the bar.  She’s aware of his gaze still, and very aware that he spends the whole time she’s in the tavern simply sitting in his throne keeping an eye on things.

But this time, for the first time, she finds the fact that he is there almost reassuring rather than threatening.


	3. Chapter 2

## 2

She can’t take all her closest companions with her every time she has to leave Skyhold.  For one, it would be too large a party to be effective; for another, they all have duties to attend to back at the Inquisition’s stronghold anyway.  Herah does her best to rotate through those she considers her friends and mentors, though.  She’s practical enough to only take people who can pull their weight, and considering enough to do her best not to displease anyone by excluding them.   Each companion has skills to put to use in Skyhold or in the field, and for the most part, Herah does her best to not slight any of them.  They each are valuable, for contacts or knowledge or skill, and it would be a poor idea to offend any of them.

But she’s a mercenary underneath it all, and so on the longer excursions – on the missions that are ill-defined and have larger scopes, where she’ll be away from Skyhold for weeks, where she’ll be stuck tromping around some ill-mapped wilderness infested with bears and bandits and who knows what else – on those missions, she’s mercenary enough to play favorites.  It’s not that she dislikes anyone, really, though she certainly has her differences with some; it’s only that some companions lend themselves better to longer and rougher trips than others.

Dorian she trusts, utterly, after their horrifying alternate reality of time travel; moreover, she likes his dry wit and his barbed snippets of affection.  She likes his magic, too – showy and proud and unapologetically uncowed by smothering Circles or elven history. 

Blackwall is solid, practical and experienced, the kind of man she can rely on no matter what the circumstance, and she values his skill in battle nearly as highly as his skill with the mundane realities of a traveling life.  She likes his focus, his blunt, black-and-white view of the world.

Cole is a surprise – strange, yes, but uncomplaining, interested, always alert.  He’s honest, which Herah values.  He’s determined to be useful and nearly as stubborn about learning more about everything: she likes that he focuses on what needs doing and gets it done.

Vivienne is, in many ways, what Herah aspires to be: unconsciously regal, commanding, graceful and composed.  She is intelligent, and her magic is a thing of concise and regimented beauty; if Herah sometimes feels rough and oversize, blunt and haphazard by comparison, then it’s not entirely Vivienne’s fault.

Cassandra is an unexpected favorite: unwaveringly loyal, surprisingly nuanced, startlingly poised.  She likes how Cassandra is unapologetically herself, and even better, she likes the woman’s direct gaze and equally direct sword-arm.

Varric makes her laugh, makes her remember simpler days and less complicated times.  His stories are as overblown as his crossbow is accurate, and she enjoys his company for both.  He’s the right blend of cautious and clever, and she enjoys that mix.

Solas is harder to pin down: reserved and serious, with unexpected gleams of humor and arrogance.  Competent, she thinks, watching his magic flow around him like water; skilled and careful and self-contained in the way apostates must be in order to survive free from Circles.

Sera, in contrast, is never so somber: she is all bright laughter and wicked thoughts blurted uncensored across a never-still tongue.  Herah shakes her head, but Sera’s antics and jokes are at once juvenile and intelligent, a contrast that seems to define the archer as much as her arrows.

And the Iron Bull…

She starts inviting the Iron Bull to accompany her on more and more excursions.

Part of it is because there is no denying his worth: he’s a skilled warrior and a shrewd observer, and since he’s insisted that he’s on her side, she sees no reason to not put him to work for her.  She brings him to Crestwood, to the Fallow Mire, to the Storm Coast.  She invites his counsel, asks his opinions, and puts his enormous strength to use as they scout new territory.  He insists he’s her ally; _fine,_ she thinks, _he can earn his keep._

Part of it is a kind of fatalistic expectation: if he is going to betray her, Herah decides she might as well get it over with as early as possible.  So she goes out of her way to deliberately treat him like a trusted companion for all she still halfway expects some traitorous misstep.  She orders him to watch her back, to cover the flank when she turns her attention to the front, to fall back when the fighting moves too far forward and leaves her vulnerable far behind.

But he doesn’t betray her, not in word or deed.  His advice is sound, and rarely off the mark.  His enormous two-handed battleaxe is sharp and surprisingly swift for such a heavy weapon.  Herah spends an uneasy few months waiting for him to turn on her, and the longer he goes without a traitorous action, the more opportunities she gives him to make the attempt.

She doesn’t trust Ben-Hassrath.  They are liars and manipulators, too cunning and calculating to be dismissed with the word spy.  Some Vashoth laugh at them, the kind of scoffing that only proves they’ve never gone up against one before.  No Tal-Vashoth laughs at the Ben-Hassrath.  Herah might have been born free – she is Vashoth, daughter of two Tal-Vashoth, and she never had to turn her back on the Qun because she has never been yoked into service beneath it – but she still knows better than to underestimate the Ben-Hassrath.

Still, after three months of waiting for betrayal, Herah begins to relax.

It isn’t deliberate, the first few times: she notices too late that she left herself open, or she is tired enough that she doesn’t stop to check his position when she collapses into her bedroll for the night. 

The Iron Bull doesn’t say anything about it for two more months, until she’s well and truly stopped being surprised to find herself alive after leaving herself open.

“You’ve stopped flinching when you notice you forgot to watch your back,” he tells her as they work in camp one evening in Crestwood.

“So?” she asks shortly, annoyed both at herself for lowering her guard and at the fact that he noticed.

“Good,” he says simply, and leaves it at that.

Herah is rather chagrined to discover that she likes him.

The Iron Bull enjoys a good fight, and that enjoyment can bleed over into enthusiasm that can carry the whole group through exhaustion to victory.  He’s smart enough to make intelligent conversation on long marches, and sly enough to make her laugh when she doesn’t mean to.  And, best of all, he’s used to the mercenary life: marches and waiting, taking orders and hunting down bandits, clearing out territory and making a rough camp.

She slides into the habit of including him on long trips without making it a conscious decision, and only realizes she’s done so when Josephine – ever the coordinator – looks up from the war table after it’s agreed that she will go to the Exalted Plains and says, “So I shall notify, let’s see – Blackwall, the Iron Bull, and… perhaps Cole?”

“Not Cole,” Herah says almost automatically, and as Josephine lifts a brow, she clarifies.  “An ancient battleground being used as a current battleground probably is a little much for a kid who wants to solve every hurt, ancient or otherwise.”

“Mm, yes,” her advisor agrees.  “Then who should I inform to be ready in his place?”

Herah has to stop to think.  Blackwall and the Iron Bull, she realizes, are her first choices for how easy they will make the journey and the camps along the way: a Warden and a mercenary understand how to travel, the logistics of cooking over a campfire for days on end, and the importance of setting up camp correctly.  Their combat prowess, while not incidental, is almost a secondary bonus to her mind.

The realization makes  her shake her head, annoyed at herself, and she flips through her companions – Cassandra would be valuable, but a bit of overkill considering the other two; Vivienne, Dorian, and Sera all hate extended camping trips; no Cole.  She weighs Solas against Varric, considers who might be better company for the trip and which projects the two are working on in Skyhold, and settles her mind.

“Varric,” she tells Josephine, and rubs at the base of her horns.  “We’ll want to leave tomorrow.”

“I will make all the arrangements,” Josephine promises, and Herah is amazingly grateful that someone else will at least handle that part of things.  It gives her a day to tie up what loose ends she can – there are always things only she can handle, it seems, and more will pop up while she’s gone – but she can at least attempt to get everything in order before she leaves.  She meets with all three of her advisors, to be sure that no essential operations will falter in her absence.  She checks in on the companions she will be leaving behind, she spends time in the Undercroft checking over her gear, and she winds up in her room alone after dinner exhausted and ready to leave Skyhold behind her.

The next morning, she dresses for the journey and packs a single saddlebag with the little necessities she’ll need.  There’s always a bit of a gathering at the stables to see her off when she leaves.  Josephine arrives with a pale, slender dwarf Herah assumes is her seneschal: he carries a sheaf of papers and a quill trimmed down to the bare nub, and he is the one to double-check that their mounts are laden with supplies for the trip.

Blackwall, Varric, and the Iron Bull are there in good enough time to stow away their personal gear and to double-check their mounts.  Cassandra always makes a point of coming to say farewell; Sera comes today as well, to pester Varric with comments about his crossbow and to make Herah promise to keep an eye out for a particular tree by a broken-down bridge where a message might be waiting for her.

Josephine, for all she is a diplomat and not a warrior, has a spine of steel.  She stands her ground as they organize their mounts and the pack horse, and even when she’s the only woman left standing in the courtyard, small and out-of-place in her golden finery against the straw and dung of the stables, she plants her feet with surety as she talks to them.

“We will send a raven to Scout Harding to expect your arrival,” she says, looking up – even more so than usual – to where Herah sits mounted aside her horse.  Josephine doesn’t flinch as the Iron Bull’s massive charger whinnies and paws at the ground, and even as Varric’s rather sprightly mare kicks away from the charger Josephine holds herself still and poised.

“We’ll try to send word when we’re able,” Herah promises her, and she thinks she sees Josephine’s stiff politeness melt, just a little.

“I would appreciate that,” the woman says, and steps to the side of the courtyard to allow them free passage.  “Safe journeys, Inquisitor.”  Her eyes flicker past Herah to extend the same courtesy to her companions.  “Master Tethras, Captain.  Warden Blackwall.”

They are almost an hour out of Skyhold before any of them say something that isn’t simple practicalities of the journey.

“Well,” the Iron Bull says comfortably, settling back into his saddle with practiced ease.  “Who wants to take bets on how many demons the Orlesians have summoned up out of the ancient blood-soaked battlegrounds?”

They slip into the habits of travel smoothly.  Blackwall is the best of them at spotting a good campsite; Varric is the best at turning out their supplies into ordered piles; the Iron Bull is best at setting up the tent; Herah the swiftest to start the campfire.  They settle into routine easily – this is not the first time they’ve traveled together – and by the time Herah and Blackwall have collected enough firewood for her to coax flame to life under their cookpot, the Iron Bull and Varric have camp all but set.

The Iron Bull organizes camp the same way every time: a mercenary’s habit Herah approves of.  It means she knows where the latrine is even if she wakes in the dark; it means the same supplies are stored in the same places no matter her surroundings; it means the cook fire is in the same place relative to the tent and the horses every day.

They trade off the basic chores of camp life.  Blackwall and the Iron Bull take turns digging the latrine; Varric and Herah, in turn, care for the horses.  They rotate cooking duties, and keep staggered watches at night around the campfire, so that no one has to sit the middle watch alone and no one has to stand watch in the midnight hours more than two nights in a row.

It is very nice, Herah thinks as she takes her turn on a quiet night’s watch, to work with professionals.

The Iron Bull chuckles, and only then is Herah aware she’s said that aloud.  “You know, boss, that reminds me of something,” he says.

They are sharing the second watch, the midnight shift that is roughest, and Blackwall will wake in another hour or so to send them to sleep and take third watch into the morning hours; Varric  had taken first watch in the early evening.  Tomorrow, it will be Herah’s turn for first watch, and the Iron Bull and Blackwall will take the midnight shift with Varric rotating to the third shift, and the rotation will continue over the coming weeks.

It leaves Herah alone with a Ben-Hassrath every three days or so, awake around the campfire in the long quiet hours of the night.  She looks across the fire at him, to the malicious cast of his sharp features in the flickering firelight, and wonders that she is not afraid of him any longer.

“You were a mercenary, obviously,” he says.  “But you’re not as experienced a leader as I would expect from someone who led a merc band.”

She laughs before she can help herself, because the Iron Bull is so very rarely wrong in his assessments that she can’t help but be amused.  To his credit, the Iron Bull understands her laughter quickly, and amusement glints in his expression even in the harsh firelight.  “All right,” he sighs, easy to acknowledge that he’s erred.  “What did I miss that that’s so funny?”

“Who said I was the _leader_ of the Valo-Kas?” she asks him, and has the very rare pleasure of seeing the Iron Bull surprised.

His eyebrows arch up, and he regards her with something like new respect.  “No…” he says.  “Really?”  His head tilts, as though he wants to better gauge – with only the one eye – her distance from him across the fire.  “Huh.”

“Shokrakar is the Captain of the Valo-kas,” Herah informs him.  “She’s in charge.  I’m a Lieutenant in charge of one forward unit.  That’s it.”

He’s frowning before she’s finished speaking.  “That can’t be it,” he protests.  “You’ve got enough training, enough potential, to be more.”

“I just lead the one team,” she explains.  “We’re mostly scouts, mostly problem solvers – the ones she sends in when she needs to get something done right.”

That clears his expression, and he regards her with understanding.  “You were Krem,” he says shortly, and brays a laugh to the night sky.  “Oh, that’s rich.”

If Herah liked Krem less, she might have been offended.  But she knows how highly the Iron Bull values his Tevinter lieutenant, and so she only nods, accepting the comparison.  “More or less,” she agrees.

“Huh,” he says, still grinning.  “That actually explains a lot.  You’ve got what it takes to lead, but no practice with it – I always figured it was just lack of opportunity, maybe a much smaller company.  But it’s just your Captain hasn’t promoted you yet.”

“I was promoted,” she corrects him.  “To Lieutenant.”

He laughs again.  “You Captain was grooming you,” he tells her.  “If you were her Krem – in charge of a forward team, in charge of troubleshooting – you were the one she wanted to watch her back, to catch her weak points, to replace her when she retires or ages out or takes one too many hits to the head.”  He uncrosses his arms almost lazily.  “I bet she asked for your opinions before every mission, and listened to what you had to say.  I bet she asked where you wanted your team to be deployed, and let you pick your ambush points.  I bet she started leaving you to your own devices almost completely, and that she started mixing in troops from other units into yours – or no, better yet, that she started asking you to deal with other units from a point of command.  Casually, I’m sure – maybe at first just relaying orders to them, so they got used to seeing you in charge.”  His lips quirk.  “Am I warm?”

Herah looks away from him, because he’s described her last six months or so with the Valo-kas to perfection.  “It’s creepy when you do that,” she mutters, and the Iron Bull laughs.

“You were Krem,” he repeats, and shakes his head with a smile.  “Oh, wait until I tell him – he’s going to love this.”

She puts the conversation out of her mind after that – there’s other things to think of, and he doesn’t bring it up with her again.  But once they’ve been back at Skyhold for a few days, some weeks after that watch around the campfire, Krem approaches her in the tavern as she’s finishing her meal and moving towards the doorway.

“Your worship,” he says, in that tone of his that is somehow matter-of-fact.  “Chief said I might want to talk with you sometime.”

Her mind is frightfully blank as to why for a long moment, and then she remembers the Iron Bull’s laughter around the campfire.  Herah looks at Krem, and realizes that the Tevinter soldier is more than just a sergeant for the Chargers.  He’s the Iron Bull’s second, yes – but he’s also the one the Iron Bull entrusts the Chargers to in his stead, the one who stands as leader when she takes the Iron Bull away from his company, the one being groomed to take over should the worst occur.

“I just thought you might like to swap war stories sometime,” she tells Krem with a friendly smile.  “I know what it’s like to keep a bunch of idiots in line – I was a lieutenant in the Valo-Kas, so I know how it goes.”

Krem’s grin is lightning-fast and easy; the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles.  “I’d wondered,” the Tevinter admits.  “I mean, you’re not as bossy as the Chief – no offense, your worship – and you’re not as stupid as some of the rank and file.”  He eyes her rather eagerly.  “We should compare notes sometime.”

They spend a few minutes together in brief conversation, and Herah steps away from the mercenary with a spring in her step, already eager for their next meeting.  She likes Krem – he’s professional and competent, and of everyone in Skyhold he’s the most familiar to her, the one most likely to understand who she was before she became the Herald and was saddled with this whole mess.

She could use a friend, she thinks rather gleefully as she goes.

She meets with Krem later that week, and they enjoy themselves enough that it becomes something of a standing agreement that a few times a week he’ll share a meal with her.  “I can’t really get too friendly with any of the Chargers,” he tells her on their third dinner together.  “Not if I want them to take me seriously, at least.”

Herah understands completely, and they share stories of the idiots they’ve rescued and the jobs they’ve taken and how many drunk mercenaries they’ve had to haul back to barracks.  She teases Krem over his crush on the bard who sings in the tavern; he mocks the ill-fitting wardrobe Josephine thoughtfully provides Herah; they both agree that the Iron Bull is infuriating and unfortunately too often correct.

She has a _friend_ , she discovers, and that makes everything so much more bearable.  Krem is good for her, uncomplicated by politics or duty or the end of the world.  It isn’t that she doesn’t have other friends, or that she dislikes her other friends.  But she sometimes wonders how she would have been friends with, say, Vivienne or Cassandra, had she not been the Herald and Inquisitor.

Herah Adaar, the Valo-kas mercenary lieutenant, could have been friends with Krem, the Tevinter sergeant of the Iron Bull’s Chargers.  It’s satisfying to know that Herah is still there, buried under Herald and Inquisitor and the trappings of leadership.

It’s a month later, on another midnight watch in the Hinterlands, when the Iron Bull comments on it.  “Seems like you and Krem are getting on all right,” he says casually.

Herah opens her mouth to agree when the realization hits, and she changes what she would have said.  “Did you set that up?” she asks instead.

He shrugs, unapologetic.  “You looked like you could use someone to talk to,” he says.  “Someone uncomplicated.  And Krem was getting a little too isolated, and he could stand to see someone like him starting to take charge.  He’s getting complacent.”

She wants to be offended.  Her mind flips through options, testing out different reactions – was this a ploy, to tie her further to him through Krem and the Chargers?  Was this a test for her?  Or a test for Krem, to determine his loyalty? 

In the end, though, none of her paranoia seems valid.  Instead, she looks across the campfire at the Ben-Hassrath she’s reluctantly stopped suspecting of ulterior motives, and says simply, “Thank you.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he says back with a grin.  “We could all use more friends these days.”

“Yes,” she agrees, and watches him.  _Are you a friend?_ she wonders, and is too afraid of what the answer means to ask it aloud.  “I suppose we do.”


	4. Chapter 3

## 3

The war table is a sprawling, overlarge thing, sturdy and thick, with carefully annotated maps spread across every inch of the surface.  Mismatched toys litter the table: children’s playthings repurposed for war and intrigue.  There are little mabari dogs, cast in pliable lead, which are used to represent the scouts; there are actual toy soldiers, used for Cullen’s troops; there are little china teacups, for Josephine’s people; there are colored beads of bone and glass spread across cities to mark where Leliana has her spies.  There are mice skulls used for their enemies, toy cavalry troops to represent Templars and miniature wooden dolls with acorn hats for the opposing side’s known puppets.

Herah cannot see them.  There are a handful of beads clutched in her right fist: six beads, glass and bright and colorful, which wouldn’t look out of place on a child’s favorite necklace.  She sighs, opens her hand, and stares at them.  They’ve left little round marks imprinted into her palm, dents created from the pressure of her grip, and those dents are white from how tightly she’s clenched her fist.

Six lives, lost.  Six more people gone because of her.

In the dim recesses of her brain, she knows it’s more complicated than that.  They were Leliana’s people, and though she had agreed to their placements, their mission itself had been suggested by another in the first place.  Too, those six had surely known the risk; Leliana’s people are not stupid. 

Still, she’d signed off on the mission, and she’d needed the information they’d died without retrieving.  There are four new beads placed on the board in the place of the six she’d removed: four more people risking their lives on her command, stepping in over the bodies of six of their comrades who hadn’t been quick enough or clever enough or lucky enough.

Herah doesn’t even know their names.

She feels numb, almost detached.  She tilts her hand to let the beads drop back down onto the table, onto the little plate where spare pieces are kept, and the beads cling to her skin, trapped by how tightly they were held.  She has to shake her hand to free them, and so the six beads miss the plate and scatter across the table and onto the floor, rolling to pitiful ends somewhere underneath the table.

Out of sight, but not out of mind. 

Herah scrubs her hand against her leg, rubbing her palm against her thigh as though she can wash away the stain of their lives imprinted there.  But on her other hand, the Anchor itches, twitches, burns, and she finds herself clenching both hands into fists again before she turns and strides out of the room.

She realizes that she doesn’t know where she’s going or what she means to do only when she bursts out of the main hall onto the long stone stairway.  The warm summer air hits her like a blast from the forge: it’s chilly in the war room, in the grand hall hollowed out of cool stone and forever shadowed, in the topmost parts of Skyhold where the mountain air retains the chill of winter in any shaded corner.  Out here, in the open air, she can feel the warmth of the sun. 

The sun is setting in the distance, but the keep is active.  People bustle past her, hurrying to and from duties, and Herah simply stands on the stairs where she was made Inquisitor and tries to remember how to breathe while she avoids her own responsibilities.

After long minutes, she descends the stairs, and almost unwillingly, she goes to the tavern.

She’s earlier than usual, and the tavern isn’t quite as full as she’s expecting.  Most of the Chargers aren’t in yet – Krem’s seat is empty, which means they’re likely still in the practice ring – and the bartender is stacking plates and readying for the evening rush. 

The Iron Bull isn’t sitting on his throne in the back, and for a brief instant, panic wells up in her throat.

She’s grown used to his presence, looking out for her so she can eat in peace, and she’s grown accustomed to asking him to travel with her when she leaves Skyhold on Inquisition business.  All the traits that had proven so worrisome when she could not be sure of his allegiances are being put to good use in her service – but moreover, he’s the closest thing she has to a confidant here, and not finding him where she expected to throws her for a loop.

Should she take her worries instead to Cassandra, who will look at her with fervent hope and steely determination?  To Blackwall, who will assure her she’s doing fine out of surety that she means well?  To Dorian, perhaps, who will cajole her into laughter but ignore the problems behind it?  She flits her way through her other companions in desperation, trying to find a second choice to go to, and finds her head spinning.

Then she turns, and nearly steps straight into the Iron Bull as he steps into the tavern.  Her hands come up defensively before she gives them permission; the Iron Bull neatly sidesteps what was nearly a spell, and gives her a look that quickly turns sharper.

“Hey, boss,” he says casually, and she can hear the more careful undertone in the greeting.

She doesn’t mince words, or try to pretend.  She’s decided to trust him: _well_ , she thinks, _let him prove he’s trustworthy._   So instead of being polite, instead of reminding him of their bargain, instead of asking nicely, instead of leaning on the tentative friendship they are forming, all she does is look up at him with slightly desperate eyes.

“Help,” she says plainly.

“Yeah,” the Iron Bull says, eying her.  He steps forward again, and slings an arm casually over her shoulder, as though she were just a fellow mercenary and they were comrades-in-arms.  “Let’s see if we can find you some dinner.”

Within five minutes, he’s shoved food into her hands and ordered her to follow him.  Shortly thereafter, he’s pushed her out of the tavern and through the courtyard, up a few sets of stone stairs and to the empty top of a tower where the sinking sun still bathes the whole rampart in golden light.

“Sit,” he says, pointing to a bare patch of flagstones where the sunlight pools.

Herah sits.  She’s too tired to argue, and her brain is too busy running circles around six names she doesn’t know to question what he’s planning.

He kneels across from her, and takes the bundled food from her hands.  It doesn’t take him long to spread it out between them, and it’s almost a funny sight to watch this hulking brute of a Qunari carefully crouch before her, precisely laying out what is clearly a picnic.

She simply sits, though, and lets her eyes drift shut to enjoy the play of the sunlight across her face and the weight of the warmth of it on her skin.  It’s always cold in Skyhold, too cold – she’s a creature of warmth, of passion, of hot blood and temper and instant decisions, of warm earth and dry winds.  She’s not meant for this cold tactical warfare, for hiding away in a mountain fortress, for calculated planning and letting others pay the blood-price for her failings. 

The ever-present wind picks up for a moment, and she shivers: it’s a cold wind, dry, with the scouring feel of snow.  It’s always the same wind at Skyhold, icy even in summer.  Herah always feels as though it will pick her clean.

She hears the Iron Bull shift in front of her, and the wind is blocked.  The heat of the sun comes back full force, warming her, and she nearly shivers in relief as it caresses her skin.  “Open your mouth,” he says, sounding amused.

She wants to open her eyes, but she doesn’t.  _This is trust_ , she thinks, and opens her mouth instead.

Something is carefully placed between her lips, and she shuts her mouth around it automatically, quickly enough that her lips brush against his fingers as he pulls them back.  He’s fed her a piece of spiced chicken, she finds, and she chews the bite slowly.  She swallows it, and only then does she open her eyes to regard him thoughtfully.

The Iron Bull is sitting across from her, blocking her from the wind and allowing her to bask in the sunlight.  He offers her a torn-off piece of bread with a little square of cheese atop it.

“Are you going to feed me my whole dinner?” she can’t help herself from asking, amused.

The amusement is reflected back at her in the way his mouth twists upward, but there’s something more than amusement – something focused and sharp – buried in the way he looks at her.  “Do you need me to?” he asks seriously.

She opens her mouth again, watching him, and without taking his eye from hers, he places the bread and cheese into her mouth.  She eats the bite, and he gathers his next offering.

“No,” she says once she’s swallowed.  “I don’t think you need to.”

His lips twitch, and he holds up a piece of chicken.  “But do you want me to?” he asks, and though there’s an undercurrent of laughter in his voice, she knows it’s a serious offer.

She takes a moment to consider, looking at him.  This is not what she expected from him, she realizes.  Thoughtfulness, concern.  She finds that her eyes slide from his rather battered face to the broad swell of his shoulders, to the way the muscles there shift as he moves his arm to extend the food towards her mouth, to how his blunt and battered fingers delicately wrap around the bite he offers her.

Because that thought suddenly makes her awkward, she reaches for the chicken with her hand, and doesn’t allow him to feed it to her again.  He doesn’t seem offended, and instead looks down to start work on collecting her next bite.

“Tell me about it,” he says, pulling apart the bread.

She swallows down the chicken, and looks past him to the snow-capped mountains surrounding them.  “I killed six people,” she says after a moment.

“The truth,” he orders quietly, and hands her more bread and cheese.

So she tells him, because she has no one else to tell, and he hands her pieces of food as she speaks.  He stands with her when her emotions drive her to her feet, when she paces the top of the tower and curses the enemy, curses herself, curses the whole stupid situation, and when she finally drops back down to the warm stones of the tower with a huff, he slowly lowers himself to sit down beside her.

She’s embarrassed and relieved at all once.  She looks at him curiously, and asks, “Why are you doing this?”

His response, when it comes, is measured.  “You’ve got a lot of people to look out for, boss,” the Iron Bull tells her somberly.  “Life or death decisions, armies to order around, mages and Templars and politics, archdemons…”  He trails off, gives her a sudden grin that is almost infectious in its sheer brilliance.  “And you’ve got _great_ shoulders, boss, but anyone would wilt with that much weight on them all the time.”  And, because she just cannot predict him at all, he continues, “Seriously, do you do exercises every morning or something?  I mean, I’ve watched you with that staff, and wow, but you’ve got just these perfect arms, and this band of muscle right here –”

She pulls back before he can touch her shoulders.  “Bull!” she exclaims, and she’s not sure if she’s scandalized or flattered, but she’s certainly not insulted.

From the way his eye twinkles, he knows it.  “Seriously, boss,” he says.  “You take care of everyone else.  Someone should take care of you.”

“That’s what this is?” she asks skeptically.  She gestures down at the remnants of her dinner on the flagstones in front of her.  “You’ll feed me and listen to me rant, and that’s taking care of me?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”  And that reckless light is back, that lilt in his voice that she recognizes from her own temperamental nature.  “I mean, there’re other things I could do, too, depending on how you’re doing, but this seemed like what you needed now.”

Herah very carefully does not think about _other things_.  Instead, she lifts her chin and holds his gaze, refusing to allow herself to blush.  “It worked,” she admits, and, what is harder, she adds, “Thank you.”

“Anytime, boss,” he says with a smirk, and then he looks away from her.  “Glad you trusted me enough to follow up on our bargain.”

She is too, she realizes, and she’s surprised at the fact.  “I clearly needed it,” is all she says, and they sit in silence for a long moment as the sun begins to sink behind not-so-distant mountains.

“I trust you,” she realizes aloud as it grows dark, and the Iron Bull grunts at her side.

“Wondered how long it would take you to figure that out,” is all he says.


	5. Chapter 4

****

## 4

It’s an easy step from trust to friendship, and Herah moves forward without hesitation.

Everything seems to be going right, for once.  Scouts come back with sore feet and aching backs as their only complaints, and Cullen’s troops have four successful sorties in a row.  Leliana doesn’t smile, precisely, but the harsh lines around her mouth soften, and she unbends enough to quietly tease Josephine as they leave the War Room for supper.

It feels as though things have coalesced into something whole and strong.  Construction finishes around Skyhold, moving from the big, necessary projects to the smaller, more detailed work that makes the fortress feel less like a temporary camp and more like a permanent home.  More people arrive: recruits, merchants, pilgrims, all willing to put their talents to use with the Inquisition.

Herah, for once, feels certain that she knows what she’s doing.  She doubts herself less, and that’s only partially because she enjoys a reprieve from tough decisions: they’re preparing for the Winter Palace, of course, but she can handle preparations.  It gives her room to breathe.

Everyone seems to relax into the reprieve of autumn, for all there’s that sense of trepidation, the calm before the storm. 

Cullen begins to play chess with Dorian in the garden, where the herbalists have begun planting seeds in any free spot; Solas and the Iron Bull drift past their games often enough that Herah doubts it’s unintentional.  Vivienne smiles at Herah, and calls her “my dear” with actual affection in her voice; she and Josephine are working together on some monstrosity of a formal outfit for Herah to wear at Halamshiral, and Herah takes Varric’s advice and makes herself as scarce as possible when the two of them put their heads together.

Varric is hard at work writing what is surely an awful novel – he smirks where he sits at his table and asks Herah for florid adjectives and for names of people she dislikes so he can turn them into doomed guardsmen.  Herah is almost entirely positive that he’s writing the final installment to the romance series Cassandra routinely denies reading, and curiosity has her asking Sera to nick the book out of Cassandra’s room over the armory.  Herah makes it six chapters in, reaches the first sex scene, and gives up; it’s decently enough written, but the fact that it was written by Varric makes things awkward.  She skims the rest of the book – enough to get the salient plot points – and delights Cassandra by agreeing with her assessment of the best characters.

Blackwall is carving some elaborate rocking horse out in the stables, shaped – of course – like a griffon.  Solas takes time from the beautifully stylized murals he’s painting in the rotunda to show him how to mix paints in bright, child-friendly colors, and the two companionably work side-by-side for nearly a week to make a batch of paints they both can share.

Sera flirts with two kitchen maids and one of the stable girls, and there are reports Herah grits her teeth and does her best to ignore about how some of the more arrogant and self-important mages from the Circles have had honey smeared into their stored robes.  The honey apparently attracted a great many ants, and so there was a run on Skyhold’s laundry, only for the already irate mages to discover that the soft tallow soap had been somehow replaced with scented lard – it was a never-ending list of ever-worsening complications that Herah determinedly did not involve herself in, so that when Fiona tentatively approached her wondering why her three of her Senior Enchanters were reduced to wearing the patched linen robes meant for the sickroom patients, Herah could honestly reply that she knew nothing about any of it.

Krem and the Chargers return from scouting out Haven’s ruins, and after a few boisterous nights celebrating their homecoming, they settle back down into the day-to-day routine.  Except then Herah discovers that they enjoy running miniature war games – an exercise in understanding the battlefield, Krem tells her seriously as he sews little stuffed dolls to use in what is supposed to be a serious teaching tool regarding squad placement and siege warfare but which quickly turns into requests to use Inquisition trebuchets and half the Chargers doused in moldy flour. 

Herah works with her trainers, and spends time with her friends, and goes nearly an entire month without having to lead a group out of Skyhold on some quest or another.  She teaches Dorian how to use magic to warm himself as autumn winds howl across the mountains, and she is definitely not the mysterious individual who redecorates Krem’s room with the torn and mostly destroyed stuffed remains of the little dolls used in his war games.

It is glorious, to be easy with her friends, to not feel the weight of the world upon her.  Herah realizes that she feels like herself once again: like Herah, and not simply Herald or Inquisitor.  She can laugh, and joke, and make fun; she can speak her mind without worry of offense; she is free of the need to be perfect, to make all the decisions. 

She can exchange wicked barbed innuendos with Krem over ales in the tavern; she can flirt outrageously with Dorian in the safety of knowing neither of them mean it; she can be a little more open in her appreciation of Blackwall’s chest, the Iron Bull’s shoulders, the way Cullen moves in the practice yard, how Varric’s eyes crinkle when he laughs, and how Krem’s lips twist when he grins.  She can clap a hand to Cassandra’s shoulder in companionship, and have that iron woman give her the same gesture fiercely in return in a show a friendship; she can laugh at Sera’s exuberance and offer her a piggy-back ride when she’s drunk; she can envy the possessed grace Vivienne demonstrates in the way she steps into a room like she owns it.

She’s herself again, grown into the harness of words that define her.  She can carry the weight of them naturally now, which makes her unfettered and unrestricted by the yokes of her titles, and it delights her.  It surprises the others, occasionally.  The Iron Bull will give her a suddenly sharp look sometimes, when she makes a wry observation or twists in her seat to call an insult to Krem.  Sera had practically fallen out of her seat in cackling laughter when Herah serenely and blatantly denied knowing anything about a bet riding on the outcome of a competition between Cassandra and Blackwall.  Varric gave her a wide and wicked grin when she dragged him in front of Cassandra to share his latest novel; Cassandra gave her a fondly exasperated groan when she teased her about the little hearts on the shoulders of her armor.  She makes a pithy comment about some uppity human noble in front of Vivienne, and is graced with a titter of laughter and a side-eye of complete approval.

They all adapt, each of her companions and advisors, to seeing Herah beneath her titles, and as autumn slowly encircles around Skyhold, Herah realizes with satisfaction that her unlikely new situation has somehow become bearable.  She has friends, she thinks, and her friends know her now as Herah as much as they know her as Inquisitor; it is surprising how much of a difference that makes.

She allows herself to look forward again.  There’s a note from Shokrakar, and Herah sends her former company out on a mission knowing they’ll love it, and for the first time in months, she thinks about what she’ll do when this whole Herald mess is over without assuming it’ll kill her. 

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back,” she tells Krem one night as they sit companionably side-by-side in the tavern.  “Shokrakar’s good, and the Valo-Kas are practically family – but it’s a different way of life, being with them.”

“Valo-Kas are all pretty much Qunari, aren’t they?” Krem asks.  “Or Tal-Vashoth, Vashoth, whatever you lot are if you’re not under the Qun.  You all have horns, at least.  Must be a different type of feel to the group.”

Herah’s lips twitch to one side, considering the point.  “A bit,” she admits.  “There’s something shared about that, being around people who understand what it’s like to be outsiders, to be hunted.  A bit of a shared culture, I guess.”

“Is it much like being a real Qunari?”  Krem gestures towards the Iron Bull, who’s sitting at the end of the table with a pint and a barmaid draped across his lap.  “I mean, like Chief?  Not like Chief’s the best example, really, I suppose,” he amends, as the Iron Bull roars with laughter at something the barmaid says and pulls her close for a casual kiss.

She snorts despite herself.  “It’s not as different as you might think,” she says, and then pauses, trying to find a way to explain it.  “Life under the Qun is… regimented, I suppose, is the best word for it.  Predictable.  That’s what the ones who were born into say, at least, and what those of us born free are taught.  And for a lot of Tal-Vashoth – the ones who lived under the Qun and escaped it – they can’t ever really escape their need for routine, for habit.  So that carries over a bit.”  She considers, speaks slowly as she continues on.  “With the Valo-kas, there are enough of us that were never under the Qun – Vashoth – that there’s no real conditioning to break, and sometimes that’s taken to extremes to make a statement about never being under the Qun.  So there are often two ends of the same spectrum mixed together in the company, the Tal-Vashoth carrying some habits from the Qun and the Vashoth blatantly going against those habits to prove that they don’t have them.  Sometimes there’s even Tal-Vashoth deliberately trying to prove they’re free of the Qun, and they’ll take it even further than a Vashoth would.  It makes for a strange company, I’d guess, and likely confuses outsiders even more.”

“How do you mean?” Krem asks curiously.

She shrugs, leans back in her chair, and gestures at the Iron Bull, all but wearing the barmaid as a scarf.  “Well, that, for example,” she says with a grin as the barmaid presses a lavish kiss to the Iron Bull’s neck.  “Under the Qun, sex just another physical requirement – something you do when you’ve got the itch, not something you do with friends or someone you love.  So there are some of us who view it as nothing more than that, and they’ll sleep with a stranger, someone they don’t know, so they can scratch that itch for the night.  But then there are some of us who were raised by parents who hate the Qun, and they’ve been taught that sex without affection is meaningless, empty and worthless and a sign that they’re no better than the mindless slaves yoked to the Qun, so they wait until they’re in love to sleep with someone.”  Herah’s lips quirk upwards, and the scar at the corner of her mouth pulls tight.  “Which, as you can imagine, makes figuring out if you should invite someone back to your tent or not a loaded question.  Now imagine that same dichotomy for just about every decision under the sun – from what style clothing to wear to what to think of mages to how to treat real Qunari – and you’ve got the Valo-kas.”

“Ouch,” Krem says sincerely, and takes a long swig from his tankard.  “No wonder you’re able to handle this Inquisitor business, if that was your day-to-day company politics.”

She takes it as the compliment he clearly intended it to be, and laughs.  “You learn quickly where an individual stands on pretty much everything,” she tells him.  “It’s usually fairly obvious.”

Curiosity sneaks onto Krem’s face, and Herah’s been with mercenaries too long to not guess what question comes next.  When Krem speaks, she’s not surprised: “So which side are you on?” the sergeant asks.  “Sex for love or sex to scratch an itch?”

Herah knows it’s a touchy subject for Krem, knows he’s not approaching the pretty bard on the tavern’s main floor because he’s not sure how he can answer that own question for himself.  So while her first response is dry – “Sorry, Krem, you know we’re friends, but you’re an ugly –“ she fully expects the swat the man swings at her, and once she’s dodged it, she gives an honest answer.

“I’ve tried both,” she says.  “They’ve each got something going for them.”

“Huh,” Krem says, and he takes a long, slow gulp to finish his ale.  “Somehow I can’t picture you as either – desperately saving yourself for love or going through stableboys the way Chief goes through barmaids.”

The Iron Bull’s current conquest gives a loud peal of laughter, and then saunters past them on her way back to the bar with an exaggerated swing to her hips; Krem and Herah glance to where the Iron Bull sits, clearly enjoying the view as the barmaid walks away, and then Krem and Herah share an equally amused smirk between themselves.

“No one,” Herah says solemnly, “can come close to matching the Iron Bull in that department.”

They burst into spasms of laughter together, and at the end of the table, the Iron Bull frowns at them.  “Damn straight,” he tells them, his voice deep and amused, and then he adds, “Hey, you could always be a Charger once this whole mess is over, boss.  You’ve already got the horns.”

Krem protests.  “Hey, don’t go trying to hire my replacement right in front of me,” he complains, and Herah laughs and the conversation turns into a joking, mostly-not-serious plan for how Krem could leave to start his own company and take most of the current Chargers with him.

It takes Herah at least a day to realize that Iron Bull’s comment likely meant he overheard the whole conversation, and the fact that she’s only mildly embarrassed and not at all uneasy means, she supposes, that she really does consider him a friend.


	6. Chapter 5

## 5 

Adamant tries to break her.  Death and demons, good intentions and bad ends, betrayal and sacrifice.  Herah battles her way through Nightmare’s domain with flame and determination, her fingers white and her palms clammy where they hold tight to the grip of her staff.  She presses on, through the living Fade and past Nightmare itself, forcing herself to move forward without pause until she has dealt with the Wardens, dealt with her advisors, dealt with the logistics involved in victory against all odds.

Only once she is sitting alone in the center of her bedding does Herah allow herself to look at her hands and let them tremble.

Once the shaking starts, she can’t stop it.  She hugs her knees to her chest with arms all but vibrating with exhaustion.  She lets her head rest against her knees, lets her eyes shut as she pushes her forehead against her dusty pants, and hugs herself tight to keep from flying to pieces.

 _What have I done?_ she wonders, over and over again.

She’s no Andrastrian, to believe legends of the Golden City defiled by mortal touch; no part of her heritage believes that to bodily enter the Fade is tantamount to storming heaven.  She is a mage, after all: she has touched the Fade before, dreamed in it and shaped it and called it to serve her will.  She is as familiar with it, she supposes, as any sane mage might be, and at least is free of the superstitious religious fear associated with it.

But traveling the Fade was wrong, in a way that sends her skin to shivering and her breath to stuttering in fearful, shaken gasps.  It’s a delayed reaction, the part of her brain that seems detached realizes.  She’s safe in her tent, away from prying eyes, back wholly in the world with everything that needed attention seen to.  She’s falling apart here because she can afford to do so.

So Herah gasps and holds on to herself and quakes in terror of what the Mark on her hand has done to her, what it is and what it can do, what it has led her to become and what it has created in the world.

She is Herald and Inquisitor because of this Mark.  She has conscripted mages and Wardens, spoken with authority over those submitted to her for judgement.  She has been hope for those who needed it, and death for those who trusted her to lead and save them.  And now she knows that the Mark is hers only by chance.

Tears threaten, and safe in her solitude, Herah does nothing to stop them.  If that makes her weak, so be it; she no longer cares.  She is strong when she needs to be, so she is allowed to falter when she cannot bear that burden any longer.

It is all too fresh.  Her tent is thin, and she muffles her weeping so it does not pass through the thin fabric walls.  Too much already carries past them: there are wounded, and their moans float from the healing yard on air that smells of fire and death.  She can hear the tired talk of soldiers exhausted by battle, the strange elation of survival mixed with the numbing horrors of the battlefield.  There’s the snap of campfires, the trod of boots weighed down with the clink of armor, the murmurs of guards as they are stationed and rotated.

There are footsteps approaching her tent, and as they grow near, Herah scrambles to stop shaking, to pull herself together to be the Inquisitor her visitor will need to see.  She hauls in a sobbing breath, dashes the tears from her cheeks, and drags herself to her feet: it will be Leliana, she thinks, with news, or Cullen with battlefield reports and casualty lists, more dead to heap at her feet, to stare at her with glazed, baleful eyes where they rot in the fields.

Instead, the footsteps are slow and measured, and they pause to confer with the two soldiers standing guard beside her tent’s entrance.  “Dinner for the Inquisitor,” she can hear the Iron Bull say clearly, and there’s a brief exchange with the guards before he approaches her tent.

“Hey, boss,” he calls as he covers the few final steps to her tent’s door.  “Present for you.”

She doesn’t want him to see her like this, she realizes: it has nothing to do with him being Ben-Hassrath and everything to do with her pride.  “I’m not hungry,” she manages tightly. 

“Sure you are,” he counters easily, and before she can tell him to go away, he’s pushed his way inside her tent.  “Hey,” he greets her, and though he surely notices the tell-tale sign of tears and fear, he doesn’t comment on them.  Instead, openly stares around her tent.  “Nice place.”

Her tent is large enough for four people to stand around a table and plan war.  There are carpets laid, so that her bare feet rest on woven cloth and not hard dirt; there are lamps hung from the center points and chests of supplies and necessities positioned and carefully padded with pillows to act as extra seating; her sleeping arrangements are not a bedroll but a plush if thin mattress with blankets and pillows on it to mimic a real bed.  It is the best tent Herah has ever been afforded in all her years of campaigning, and at the Iron Bull’s words, she looks around herself at the plush Orlesian carpets and the fancy Antivan wrought-iron lamps, and starts to laugh.

She laughs because she can’t help it, and too quickly, the laughter turns to sobs, and she can’t help those either.  In quick seconds she’s on her knees again, hands spread across her face as though it would prevent the Iron Bull from somehow seeing her fear, her grief, and she simply can’t stop crying despite her shame.

He lets out a long, gusty sigh, and she hears him set the tray of food down on the chest by the doorway.  Then he steps across the tent to her, crouches down beside her, and topples her off her knees and into his lap.  “Hush,” he tells her, his voice soft and gentle.  “You’re all right.”

He shifts his large hands so that he’s cradling her like a child: she’s curled up into herself in his lap, her head resting against his chest and his arms pulling her tight into him.  He smells like smoke, like dust and the brimstone of rage demons, the burnt aftertaste of scorched leather and the sour tang of sweat.  She cries, all but silently, and he rocks her, back and forth, careful of where her curving horns could pierce into his shoulder.  She cries, and his arms encircle her and keep her contained where her brain wants to dash itself to pieces, and in the end she rests her head on his chest and does nothing but listen to his heart beat as the last of her tears fall. 

She stays there, then, cradled in his lap, her head against his chest so that her right horn presses against his collarbone and her cheek touches bare scarred skin.  His heart beats beneath that skin, slow and solid, and she counts the heartbeats as she counts her breaths, trying to restore her equilibrium.  She should stand, she thinks.  She should stand and apologize, thank him for helping her, eat the food he’s brought and think about the future.

Instead she shuts her eyes, focuses on her breathing and his heartbeat, and exhaustion drags her down into sleep.

She wakes alone, draped across her bed with one of the closely-knit blankets Leliana favors covering her, and is equal parts mortified and relieved.

It’s very early morning, she discovers when she pokes her head out of her tent.  The stars are still barely visible in the night sky, and the sentries on duty are not yet starting their end-of-watch routines.

It is nearly winter, and the night air is cold and frosty with the promise of snow.  Herah stands in the doorway of her luxurious tent and looks out over the camp sprawled around her.  Small pup tents and bigger mess tents loom up like grey shadows out of the plains, and the walls of Adamant Fortress – battered, broken, but still impressive – rise up like a shadowy mountain over the village of tents.

There are pathways carefully preserved between rows of tents.  Cullen’s soldiers, for all half of them started as volunteers, have been trained well.  The camp is laid out in military order, with torches standing at the intersections of rows of tents, and sentries walking patrols along the perimeter.  It is early enough that even the cooks are still sleeping; the only ones stirring are the soldiers assigned to guard duty.

Herah nods at the sentries posted by her tent – the Inquisitor, of course, deserves a special guard – and sets off to wander the camp.

She learns the rows of tents, where the mess is and where the healers are.  She finds the latrines, the armory, the repair area with blacksmiths and farriers.  She visits the horses standing drowsy in their makeshift pens, and eventually ends her tour at the large clearing left uncluttered in the center of the camp, the parade ground where the troops assemble for head counts, instructions, and inspiration.

She stands there in the darkness and turns slowly, taking in the view of the camp all around her.  Torches flicker; tents cast shadows; sentries on duty converse in low, tired tones.

This is hers.

Every tent, every crumpled bedroll, every exhausted soldier.  Every wagon of supplies, every kitchen pot, every civilian offering aid to support the troops.  Every war machine and sword, every staff and potion, every bandage and body ready for burning.  Even the stone walls of the Fortress and the shattered shards of its once-proud gate: everything she sees, she is responsible for.

Herah is the Inquisitor.  That makes all of this hers: her problem and her dependents, her pride and her joy, her salvation and her ruin.

She stands straighter for it, more certain, where before that knowledge might have laid her low.  The Anchor sparks in her palm, and the itch it causes for doing so is familiar now, a year and more after she first stumbled from the Fade with power clenched in her fist.  That, too, is hers.

Chance, she thinks, ruminating on the new knowledge she learned in the Fade.  She is no divinely-chosen savior, no true Herald.  It’s as she maintained from the beginning: she is only herself, and she wasn’t saved by Andraste so that she could save the world.  She has no predestined glory awaiting her, only an end of her own making.

Chance sits better upon her shoulders than a miracle, and she squares those shoulders back, rolls them once to work out stiffness.  She is Inquisitor and Herald, and if Herald is false at least Inquisitor is true.  She’s earned Inquisitor, even if she hadn’t earned Herald; because of that honesty, she thinks, neither title will strangle her with responsibilities.

The camp is quiet in the night air.  Herah stands still and breathes it in, grounding herself in the reality of the world.  She breathes out the Fade, the wrongness, the truth of how she earned her Anchor.  She breathes in the camp, the people who follow her, the truth of what she has become because of her stubborn curiosity.

Herald is a title she will never escape, for all she now knows the truth of it.  But it doesn’t frighten her now, the way it did when no one would believe she wasn’t somehow holy.  Now Herald only carries with it the weight of the faithful, the light in their eyes as they struggle towards what they believe is right.  They are as frail as belief and as strong as hope, the backbone of the Inquisition if not the might.  She is the Herald, and now she sees that as less a holy calling and more a mundane job: a herald, she thinks, announces change.  That fits.  She can carry that.

Inquisitor, too, is a title, and it lies around her neck like a collar of iron and war.  But her collarbones are strong enough to bear the weight of it, and her head can rise proudly over the chain of command she wields.  She’s no longer intimidated by it.  Inquisitor is a part of her, now: leader and champion, Herald and advocate, diplomat and general.  She carries it with her unconsciously, and she thinks now that it refined bits of her into prominence, coaxing them forth out of her unfinished self.  She had the potential for leadership, for decision-making, for inspiration, for control; Inquisitor brought that potential to the fore, polished qualities she barely knew she had, and set them like diamonds into the iron collar of being Inquisitor.

The truths learned in the Fade are disquieting, yes, disturbing and thought-provoking.  But in the end, Nightmare cannot take anything away from her.

This is hers.

She turns back to her tent with a quieter mind and less tentative steps. 

She bathes.  She is the Inquisitor: she could have servants woken, and they would stumble blearily from well-earned beds to haul her water from Adamant’s wells, to heat the water over a freshly-built fire, to add scented oils and poultices to the water until it is warm and inviting and sweet-smelling.  They would do so without the complaints she’d deserve for rousing them, because she is the Inquisitor, and they are happy to serve her.

Herah hauls her own water.  She is strong enough to drag the wooden bathing tub from the storage wagon into her tent without requesting aid from her guards, who eye her with some combination of amusement and approval as she does so.  There are wooden buckets near the kitchen tents, and it takes her six trips with one in each hand to fill the bathing tub enough.  She pours the water straight into the tub, and heats it with a gesture and a brush of fire.  It is at once a practical and a frivolous use for her magic, she thinks, for the price she pays to wield a staff and the control Fade’s power.

She strips off her clothing, the antaam-saar she wears on a daily basis.  Her fingers are familiar with the knots and ties that keep it in place, and in the end she leaves a sad pile of stained cloth and torn braided cord behind her when she steps naked into the bathing tub.

It isn’t large enough for her to lounge, to relax.  The water is so hot it is nearly scalding; her skin heats and flushes where it is submerged.  Herah prefers to bathe in springs, where she has room to move; in bathing houses, where she can stretch out in gently-heated water; even in the modest bathing tub in her room in Skyhold, where the servants add dried flowers and scented soap to the water.

Here all she has is hot water and barely enough room to sit submerged to her waist with her legs tucked up beneath her. 

It’s enough.

She scrubs the previous day off of her: dirt, blood, Fade.  She scours her skin until it is clean and shining, until there is no blood under her fingernails nor trapped in the creases of her palm.  She cups water in her hands, and pours it on her head; she soaks her hair, and tousles it between her fingers to clean it of the smell of smoke and death and Nightmares.  She itches fiercely the bases of her horns, and runs a damp cloth along their length, freeing grime and spatter as she goes.

She steps forth from the bath ready to face a new day, and yelps when she turns to find the Iron Bull in her tent, offering her a long piece of cloth to dry herself with.

“Relax, boss,” he says, as she snatches the cloth from him and wraps it around herself.  His voice contains both amusement and kindness, and his gaze is focused on her face.  “I don’t look uninvited.”

He moves quietly for a man his size, and it bothers her that she was so lost in cleansing herself that she has to take his word for it.  She clutches the cloth to her breasts, hauled in an annoyed breath, and remembers falling asleep in his arms.

It takes the wind from her sails, so that instead she says nothing.  She hitches the cloth tighter, lets her hair drip down her back, and turns toward the small chest that holds her belongings.  She has relatively few spare clothes – Skyhold’s tailors not being very familiar with how to braid the cords of the antaam-saar so that they will lie flat against her skin – but now that she’s clean, she doesn’t want to simply wear the clothes that she’d cast off before her bath.

She dresses quickly, as the Iron Bull stands and hums at the tent wall behind her.  Her clean antaam-saar is older than the one she’d wore the day before, softer and frayed and worn loose, so that she has to cinch the blue fabric tighter around her back and tie a more awkward than usual knot there before she is decent.

“You can turn,” she tells her unexpected guest mildly once she’s done, and he does so immediately.

“I was just checking in on you,” he says, and his eyes sweep from her bare toes to her horns. 

“I’m fine,” Herah says calmly, and meets his eyes so he can see it is not a lie.

He considers her for a long moment, and blows out a slow breath.  “Yeah,” he says, sounding some combination of impressed and surprised.  “You are.”

He says nothing after that, only looks at her.  Herah looks back.  The silence stretches from comfortable to not: tension rises up between them, tight and strong and undeniable.  She studies him in the silence, and notes the faint shadows beneath his eye, the way there is still something dusty smudged along his left arm, how the stubble on his chin is longer than she’s seen it before.  She thinks his fingers tremble where they rest at his sides. 

He has not slept, nor taken the time to tend to himself.  Something in the pit of her stomach does a long slow flip.

She does not lift her chin, but only because that would betray nerves and he would notice.  So instead, Herah steps forward, and then left.  She reaches for the wooden comb sitting on a side table, where she’d left it a day and what feels like a lifetime earlier, and without looking at him, she asks, “How are you doing after yesterday?”

“Fine,” he says, and her lips curve because it is so rare to catch him in a lie that she can’t help it.

“Truth,” she chastises softly, and lifts the comb to her head.

He watches her for another long moment, as she brushes out damp white hair.  Her hair is not very long – just past her shoulders – and it is straighter than ever as wet as it is.  She works out tangles mechanically, with her fingers and with the wide wooden teeth of the comb.  Her horns hinder her efforts in places, but they always have: her horns hit their full length when she was fourteen, and she’s adjusted for them her whole adult life.

The Iron Bull takes a single step forward, and then stops.  Her fingers twitch, and are still.  “May I help?” he asks, and his voice is low, lower than usual, a rumble in the twilight glow cast by the single lantern in her tent.

Herah’s mouth is dry.  This is a boundary, a step that even crying in his arms the previous night cannot match.  Unlike that burst of emotion, this is deliberate.  Her heart lurches, pounds to a hard and fast rhythm.

She doesn’t respond in words.  Instead, she steps forward and offers him the comb.  It is dwarfed in his fingers when he takes it, but his hands are steady.  She turns her back to him – no need to sit, as he is taller – and waits.

He lifts the comb, and begins.  He brushes her hair carefully, gentle with the tangles and the sensitive skin of her scalp.  He stays quiet, and Herah’s heartbeat slows back to something near normal.  He is practiced as he maneuvers the comb around her horns, and Herah’s mind wanders: his own horns sprout from his head like a dragon’s, out and to the sides.  Hers grew back over her head then curve down and forward, like a ram’s.  Still, he seems adept at working around them all the same, carefully keeping the comb from knocking into her curving horns.  Did he ever have longer hair, so that he learned to brush around his own horns?  She wonders what that might have looked like, but can’t picture it. 

When he speaks, his voice is soft and unexpected.  “I’m fine,” he says, as the comb slides through untangled hair.  “And I will be fine until we are all safely back in Skyhold.”

“And then?” she dares to ask.

His breath hitches.  If it hadn’t been so silent otherwise, she’s not sure she would have caught it.  The comb doesn’t tremble, and there’s no hesitation in his voice; but still, she heard his breath catch.  “Then I’ll process,” he says simply, stroking the comb down her hair again.  “And I’ll deal with it.”

He hates demons, she knows, and she took him into the living Fade and confronted him with every Nightmare he could possibly fear.  She shuts her eyes, and guilt rolls over her.  “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, boss,” he chides.  “You did what you had to do.”

“Still,” she says.  “I’m sorry I did it to you.”

She could have chosen Cassandra to stand at her side, or Dorian, or nearly anyone else.  But she’d been frightened, and she’d chosen companions who helped her shore her own fears up: Blackwall and the Iron Bull and Varric.  And she’d hurt them all: Varric lost a friend to Nightmare, Blackwall watched his order implode, and she’d sent the Iron Bull bodily into the realm of demons.

The comb pauses, and doesn’t come back down on her hair.  There is just enough time to miss the pressure of it, the rhythm, before she feels hands on her horns.  Horns aren’t sensitive enough to discern light touches or temperature, of course, but the Iron Bull is Qunari and thus well aware of their limitations.  He grasps them firmly enough she can feel the weight of his hands on them, and slides his hands up the horns to their bases, where the bony protrusions thrust out of her skull through skin and hair.  Large fingers pause there, and the pressure he applies is beautiful, welcome and needed and perfect, so much so that Herah sways before she can help herself.  Eyes she’d opened when the comb stopped flutter shut again almost against her will, and she only barely manages to contain her small hum of pleasure.

Only another Qunari would know how tension gathers there, how when it does no itching or rubbing can help relieve it.  Only someone who has carried stress at the base of their horns could know how to press to mitigate the pain.

“None of this,” the Iron Bull says quietly, fingers pressing into the base of her horns and huge body looming up close behind her, so close that she can hear his breathing, feel the warmth of his skin, “is your fault.”

He releases her horns, and steps back so quickly she sways again, surprised as the loss of his presence and warmth.  “Now,” he says from behind her.  “What did I just tell you?”

“None of this is my fault,” she repeats obediently, and turns to face him.

He gives her an approving nod, and then gestures at a side table.  “I was bringing you breakfast when I was… distracted.”  He shrugs.  “Figured you didn’t eat anything last night, and figured your little inner circle will be on you pretty quick this morning.  Might as well get some food into you before you have to be all Inquisitorial again.”

She glances at the tray of simple breakfast foods sitting on the side table.  He’s brought her breads and butter, boiled eggs and slices of ham, enough for an army.  Her lips quirk up into a smile, the scar on the edge stretching not unpleasantly as she looks back at the Iron Bull.

“Taking care of me, are you?” she teases.

His snort of laughter is quiet.  “Someone has to.  You’ll be all right, boss.”

She laughs before she can help it.  Because it surprises him, she stretches her arms wide and smiles at him.  “Bull,” she says, and wonders when she’s grown comfortable enough with him to shorten his name.  It doesn’t stop her smile.  “I have slept for four hours, I took a nice walk, and I have had a bath.  I’m wearing clothes which are neither bloody nor dusty, my hair is clean and brushed for the first time in twenty-four hours, and I no longer have anything unspeakable under my nails.  Someone gave me a very nice horn massage.”  She drops her hand, lets her smile spread.  “I can take on the world right now.”

He studies her for a long beat, and then his grin – slow and self-satisfied – appears.  “Good,” he says.  He doesn’t say more than that: instead, he gives her a fairly grave nod, approval in his eyes, and turns.

Herah watches him go, and wonders if he’s slept, if he’s all right, if there’s more to this dance of theirs than their simple bargain.  Her thoughts splinter from him to her other companions – Varric is surely mourning, and Blackwall seems like he’s expecting the other shoe to drop at any moment, and Cassandra was distraught to hear the truth of the Divine…

She shuts her eyes, just briefly, thinking on the work that she has ahead of her.  Then, because the world is hers at the moment, she takes a deep breath, and turns her attention to her breakfast.


	7. Chapter 6

## 6

“Ah, Inquisitor?” Krem asks hesitantly the afternoon they arrive back in Skyhold.  “I think maybe you ought to go talk to the Chief.”

“Mm?” Herah asks, distracted by the sight of the last supply wagon lurching through Skyhold’s fortified gates.  It’s threatening snow, or at least sleet, and she’s relieved the last of her supply train is off of the muddy roads before they freeze.  Then she processes that Krem’s used her title, which means this is an official visit and not solely a friendly one, so she glances at the gates as they shut and tries to remember what else she has on her plate before she can talk to the Iron Bull.  “Why?”

“He’s asked the Seeker to beat him with a stick.”

Herah stops, blinks.  Tilts her head.  “What?” she asks, sure she can’t have heard correctly.

“He’s asked the Seeker to beat him with a stick,” Krem repeats, voice neutral.  “And, um, she’s doing it.”

“What the…”  And there aren’t even words, she’s so baffled.  Herah furrows her brow, looks up towards the upper bailey where her two apparently insane companions must be, and blankly tries to summon up a way for those words to make sense.  A drop of half-frozen rain smacks her cheek, and then another, but the deluge holds off.

“Oh,” Krem says, and sighs, obviously disappointed.  “Lovely.  I was hoping it was just some Qunari thing, and you’d say something like, ‘Oh, yes, it’s late Autumn, that’s the friends-beat-each-other-with-sticks holiday’, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about Chief going crazy.”

But that does make something slip into place.  His words click against a memory and bring it to life.  “Oh,” Herah realizes, and shuts her eyes.  “Oh, no.”

“Oh, no?” Krem repeats, and he looks uneasy.  “Wait, no, that’s worse.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Herah says, opening her eyes.  “You were right, it’s a Qunari thing.  Don’t worry about it.”

Krem, to his credit, takes her at her word, and steps to the side to let her pass.  She climbs the stairs to the upper bailey with trepidation, and can hear the Iron Bull railing against Cassandra before she sees them. 

Just as she rounds the corner of the tavern and they come into view, Cassandra winds up her strike like an executioner giving the final blow.  It lands with a solid crack against his midsection.  The Iron Bull goes down like a pile of bricks, wheezing a compliment, and Cassandra, amusement barely hidden in the annoyance on her face, hands Herah the stick as she turns away.  It’s supposed to be a ceremonial rod, she knows, twisting the stout staff he’s clearly chosen in place of the carved and metal-capped rod she remembers from the Valo-kas; if Krem had said he was using a metal _liskah_ in place of a stick, she’d have understood what was going on right away.     

“You talk to him,” the Seeker says, sounding more like she’s trying not to laugh and not like she’s disgusted with his insults.  “Maybe you’ll make better progress than I.”

The Iron Bull heaves himself up from the ground, lurching to his knees and then his feet with none of his usual grace.  “Yeah,” he pants.  “Come on, boss.  Give me a good one.”  He shakes his head like a feral creature when a drop of sleet lands on his nose, waves Cassandra off as she steps away.

“Really?” she asks him.  She’s not disappointed, not quite.  He’s Qunari, of course, so she should have expected this, or at least not been surprised by it.  But it is still something of a letdown to understand that he’s turned to this.

He misinterprets her – deliberately, she’s fairly sure.  “Really,” he says, and braces himself.  “Come on, boss – a couple good ones.”

Feeling somehow dirty, as though she’s contributing to delinquency, Herah raises the stick and gives him a fairly solid thwack. 

He grunts.  “Come on, boss,” he encourages.  “You and I both know that’s not the point.”

The point, she thinks, is that this is a Qunari habit, and it’s not one she’s comfortable with.  She’s seen it a few times before, though she’s never before been offered the rod: she’s supposed to beat her frustrations into him, to lash out at him with pent-up fury, to funnel any wayward thoughts and actions the Qun won’t allow into her arms so that the rod lands on his chest hard enough to hurt.  He’s supposed to be strong, to withstand the pain, to understand that pain and fear cannot and have not broken him, that he is tough enough to be a rock standing firm against an ocean of madness.  The strength of her blows will reveal her faith in his ability to accept them; his willingness to stand before her is both a declaration of respect for her friendship and a demand for unchecked strength.

Something has genuinely frightened him, if he’s turned to this.  Herah can’t picture him frightened, but knows it as truth.  This is how Qunari face their fears, with trusted friends handed the rod and with active acceptance of the pain it brings.

It’s her fault, she thinks rather miserably as she lifts her arms again.  She took him into the Fade, into the home of demons.  She shattered his safe world, and took him into danger.

She frightened the Iron Bull, she thinks, and the guilt of that has her bringing the stick swinging into him down with real force as the haphazard drops of icy sleet become more regular.

He grunts as it impacts against his chest.  “Yeah!” he says, and blows out a breath.  “That’s it.  Again!”

She hauls back with muscles used to bearing a staff, and hits him a second time.  The Iron Bull rocks back a step, lets out a yell that is less agony and more intimidation, and tells her to hit him again.

By the time he tells her to stop, her hands are all but numb from the impact of the stick on his now-bruised chest.  There’s water on her face, but it is probably just from the slush falling from the sky; when she lifts her hands from the stick, the wood is wet enough that the place where she gripped it is the only dry spot on it.  The Iron Bull is breathing hard, psyched back up, boisterous and energized, and he claps an immense hand on her shoulder as she drops the stick.

“That’s the way to do it,” he assures her.  “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

She eyes the bruises on his damp chest – bruises she put there, invited or not – and feels a little queasy.  “If you say so,” she manages, and hauls in a breath, tosses her hair back.  “Are you all right?”

Something in her tone is off, because he gives her a sharp look, and then his voice gentles.  “Aw, shit.”

She can hear the sudden worry in that mild oath, the realization that perhaps she wasn’t as thrilled to participate as he expected, and she is quick to cut him off.  “Don’t you dare,” she says fiercely before he can speak.  “You asked Cassandra first for a reason, didn’t you?”

He nods, sharp eye serious.

“Good,” she says simply.  “If I remember right, you ask only people you trust to do this for you.  People who you think are strong, people you respect.  I’m glad you asked Cassandra.  And I’m glad you asked me.”  She keeps her voice firm, lets herself be honest as the rain drips down over her skin.  “I don’t like it.  But I’m glad I could do it for you.”

“Boss,” he says, and for once seems almost at a loss for words. 

She lifts her chin, doesn’t back down.  “Are you all right?” she repeats.

He stares at her solemnly for several heartbeats.  He’s always looking at her, Herah thinks: he glances at her for long moments fairly frequently, even in the middle of their discussions, as though he’s considering her, weighing his words, taking his time with responses.  She’d found it nerve-wracking before, when she assumed that because he was Ben-Hassrath he was plotting her demise.  Now it is equal parts comfortable and disquieting when he does this, when he stares at her and studies her and measures his words.

“Yeah,” he says after that long moment.  “I’m good, boss.  No demons can take out the Iron Bull.”

“Good,” she says, and hauls in a deep breath.  “Good.”

She turns on suddenly shaky legs.  She’s not sure where she’s going – out of the sleet, at least; to Krem, maybe, to tell him that yes, his chief is crazy but it’s just a Qunari type of craziness and nothing out of the usual.  But a warm large hand comes down on her wet shoulder to stop her.  “Boss,” the Iron Bull says quietly.  Then, “Adaar.  You good?”

She inhales a long deep breath, exhales.  “I don’t like hurting people, even for a good cause,” she says.  She turns, and he doesn’t lift his hand from her shoulder, just lets her skin slide under his fingers until she’s facing him, closer than they usually stand.  “But I’m good.”

He studies her, searching out any lies hiding in her statement, and finding none, nods.  “I got a message from the Ben-Hassrath,” he says abruptly.  “They’re offering an alliance.”

"An alliance?” she repeats dumbly.  “With the _Ben-Hassrath?_ ”

Her disbelief is obvious; the Iron Bull ignores it.  “With the Qunari,” he corrects.  His hand stays still on her shoulder, thumb pressed against her skin but fingers – just two of them; he’s missing most of the other two – loose on her back.  “This is big, boss.  They don’t do this.”

“Explain,” she demands, and so they stand there in what is quickly becoming a snow shower as he lays out what he knows.

“And you trust this Gatt?” she asks at the end of it all.

“Yeah,” he admits.  “I do.”  His thumb rubs against her skin, almost idly.  “I think you’ll like him, boss.  He’s a lot like me,” he adds with a grin.  “Now come on, let’s get inside and get dry.”

He is both right and wrong: Gatt, the elven Ben-Hassrath who comes to meet them bearing promises of alliance, is very much like the Iron Bull, and Herah doesn’t like him at all.

He looks at the Iron Bull with respect, something close to hero-worship, and after talking to him, Herah can grudgingly understand why the elf has patterned himself after his rescuer.  But he’s got the fervor and devotion of a convert, and the same kind of speculation Herah dislikes seeing in the eyes of real Qunari when they look at her, a kind of measuring calculation: _Why isn’t she under the Qun?  Could I make her bow to it?  Should I try?_

The Iron Bull doesn’t look at her like that, she realizes as they prepare for battle.  He never has.

He’s jovial, laughing and clearly pleased to be working again with proper Qunari.  Gatt smiles when they talk together, eager to show what he’s learned and to earn the Iron Bull’s approval; they trade stories and ask about mutual friends and in general have their own little reunion.

The only time the Iron Bull seems to hesitate is when Gatt calls him by his actual name in front of her.  Hissrad, Herah thinks: liar.  And she wonders if he’s uncomfortable with the name or with her knowing it, and doesn’t like either option.

It makes her mouth go dry, in fear and disappointment.  There are memories, too, that clamor for attention as she hears the Iron Bull and Gatt converse in quick Qunlat.  She’s ashamed of how just a few words of Qunlat can make her hyper-alert, can turn her suddenly back into a young woman bolted to the floor with a Ben-Hassrath approaching her with a saw and a needle.  She pushes the memories aside, as she’s done for years, and is surprised to realize that it’s easier than ever for her to do so: she’s older now, and harder, and knows enough to not dwell on them.  The memories don’t embarrass her any more, which is a relief: they don’t make her burn with shame or anger or furious mortification.  Instead, they make her cautious, all too aware of the scar on her lips and the sly cant to Gatt’s head. 

Still, she can’t help feeling edgy and uneasy, which is not how she wants to be for this negotiation.  The Iron Bull, for once, doesn’t notice her discomfort.  She’s not sure why that worries her.

They agree on a timeframe for the signal fire and the attacks, and retreat into their own tents to prepare for war.  Herah never takes long: she is a mage, and requires little preparation.  She wears no armor, just the cloth and braids of antaam-saar, which leave her free to move and cast and control her magic.  She needs to hone no weapon; her staff is smooth and ready in her grasp.  Instead, she takes the time to simply sit and think, to let her mind wander, to listen to the rain shushing against the tent walls and to consider what an alliance with the Qunari might mean, in the end, for a Vashoth mage Inquisitor.

“Boss?” the Iron Bull calls from outside her tent, interrupting her worries.  “I’ve got a present for you.”

She grants him entry, and he steps forward with a small ceramic pot cradled in one hand.  She smells it before she sees it, spicy and warm and bringing with it memories of the Valo-kas; then she looks at his face, at the war-paint carefully decorating his scarred skin.  “Look what Gatt brought me,” he enthuses, lifting the lid of the pot.  “Vitaar.”

The Valo-kas rarely managed to get their hands on actual vitaar – few knew how to make it, and fewer still sell it – but occasionally Pithwin got his hands on the right ingredients and made up a batch.  They would save it, hoarding it until a contract called for a real battle, and then they would share it between them, as much a ritual of comradeship as a protection and blessing for the battle.  They would dip their fingers into Pithwin’s pot, and paint sparse patterns of colored vitaar across each other’s faces: a line here, a dot there, a fingerprint to the forehead, just enough vitaar to be visible so that all of them could manage to dab the creamy paint onto their faces before the pot was empty.

There is more vitaar in this single small pot than Pithwin usually made to share between thirty or so mercenaries, even though the Iron Bull’s face is half-covered in the white paint.  Deep finger-marks from how he applied it have left smooth grooves in the vitaar still left in the pot.  Herah steps forward, smiling before she realizes she is, and takes a deep, heady breath through her nose to fully appreciate the smell.  Tart, almost ticklish, warm and spicy and with that feel in the back of her throat of something acrid. 

“Vitaar,” she says, utterly delighted, and takes another deep breath to surround her senses in the revitalizing smell.  “I don’t recognize what kind.”

He snorts.  “It’s from Par Vollen,” he says, though he doesn’t give it a name.  “You probably haven’t seen it before.”  Still, he lifts the pot.  “Want to try it?”

It’s armor, she thinks.  They were never sure if it actually did anything, but the Valo-kas had used it as a talisman, painting their faces with dabs and lines as if the vitaar could somehow grant them strength and protection. 

She could use armor for this day, Herah thinks, remembering her worries.  If she’s going to ally herself with the Qunari – with a race and a people she has always feared for being so similar and so foreign – she can at least face her fears with her face anointed for battle.  It will be like carrying the Valo-kas with her, she thinks, remembering sharing the vitaar between them, and so she looks up at the Iron Bull and smiles.

“Yes,” she says, and further, because she wants to remind them both before this mission that she values his friendship, she asks, “Will you apply it?”

He grins, clearly pleased with the request.  “Sit,” he orders her, and so they sit cross-legged on the floor of her tent, facing each other.  He dips his forefinger into the white paint, touches it to her cheek, and murmurs something in Qunlat.

It makes the hair on the back of her neck rise.

“You didn’t like that,” he says softly as he pauses.  “Was it my touch?  Or is the vitaar too strong for you?”

She doesn’t speak enough Qunlat to actually know what he said.  She considers her words, settles for the simplest answer.  “I don’t have many fond memories of Qunlat,” she says at last.

His finger dips back into the paint, returns to her face.  “My apologies,” he says, and is silent for the rest of the time it takes to decorate her face for war.

The vitaar is cool when it first touches her face, and then it warms to her skin, the kind of tingling, tight heat that no other paint can replicate.  It sings, sinking into her skin and surrounding her senses: she breathes it in, smells the tartness, feels it sting so nicely along her cheekbones.  It sets her heart beating faster, her body begging for motion, so that by the time he’s done, Herah is all but vibrating in her skin.

The Iron Bull chuckles.  “Thought you’d like this stuff,” he tells her, and wipes the last of the war-paint from his fingers by trailing them down her arm, leaving two white streaks that vanish into the soft curve of her inner elbow.  “This is good stuff.”

She’s wearing more of it than she’s ever worn before, and wonders what pattern he’s painted onto her face.  “I’ll take all the help I can get for this,” she tells him, and pushes herself to her feet by planting a hand on his shoulder and using him for leverage.  “Are you ready?”

“The Inquisition and the Qunari,” he says.  His grin is infectious, easy-going and unconflicted, and she envies him his certainty that this will all end well.  “Let’s go make history.”


	8. Chapter 7

## 7

The Iron Bull is silent.

The Chargers are a day or three behind them, boisterous and happy and alive; Herah and her party have taken the role of scouts, traveling faster and forward of the mercenary group.  Skyhold is another day distant, and they are returning with the news that there will be no Qunari alliance.

The Iron Bull hasn’t spoken much at all since they left the coastline behind them.  He’s unusually taciturn, brooding, the type of silent where she can practically see the gears turning over in his mind.

Herah wishes she had someone else here he was good friends with to talk to.  She’d brought Vivienne and Cole along – Vivienne for her calmness, her impressive demeanor and her political acumen, and Cole in the vague fear that they might need to simply vanish into the night if the alliance proved a trap.  Instead, the Iron Bull is a Tal-Vashoth, and he can turn to neither Vivienne nor Cole for understanding.  If she’d brought Cassandra, she thinks, or even Solas, maybe Blackwall: someone he could talk to, someone he could share his thoughts with so he doesn’t have to stew in them.

But she chose Vivienne and Cole, and the Iron Bull is avoiding her, so there is no one for him to talk with.

His silence spreads to the rest of them.  Vivienne handles it with grace and poise, her hands fluttering like a dancer’s as she sets camp and cares for the horses, mundane tasks the feared Madame de Fer certainly never had to handle on her own before joining the Inquisition.  The fact she does so without complaint has cemented Herah’s appreciation of her loyalty.

Cole is quiet, too, which is less usual.  Normally, he would be questioning, unhappy with the obvious hurt festering in the Iron Bull.  But instead, after trying to speak with the Iron Bull and being gruffly – but kindly – rebuffed, he’d grown quiet, introspective and curious.  Herah has the feeling he’s saving up his questions for later rather than voicing them now; Cole looks from the Iron Bull, to her, back to the bigger Qunari, and his faint frown never leaves.

“You worry over him,” the pale youth observes when they share the midnight watch together on the last night before they reach Skyhold.  “Worry, wishing, wondering.  Why won’t you speak?”

“I don’t think it would be helpful,” Herah tells him.

He frowns.  “But you are what he is now.  Aren’t you?”

"It’s not that simple,” she says, and because she knows the next word out of his mouth will be _why_ , she explains.  “I’m Vashoth: I was born free, and never followed the Qun.  He’s Tal-Vashoth: he was born into the Qun, and walked away from it.”  Cole still looks at her with concern, and she sighs.  “I never had to give up who I was, Cole,” she tells him gently.  “I’ve always been Vashoth.  I don’t know what it’s like, to choose to become something else.  I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

“He’s not Hissrad anymore,” Cole says.  “It’s just a name, and he has other ones.  Why does it hurt so much?  He hasn’t been Hissrad for a long time.”

“Names define you,” Herah says slowly.  “They tell you who you are.  They’re how other people know you.”

Cole tilts his head, contemplates her words.  “But it’s not,” he says, sounding baffled.  “His name is the Iron Bull.  He wasn’t Hissrad here.  Hissrad was gone: empty, echoing, embers in the dark after the blaze has burnt out.  So how can it hurt to give him up?”

Her heart aches, but Cole’s expression is earnest, filled with genuine confusion.  So she sighs, tries to answer him.  “I don’t know,” she says.  “I’ve never had to give up a name.”

Cole looks at her, washed-out eyes intent and kind and frightening all at once.  “No,” he says, curiously.  “You don’t give them up.  You collect them, carry them, chains and collars calling you, wearing the new with the old in layers that go deep, back and back and back.” 

He blinks, and stares up at her in something like confusion.  “They used to call you Retha-ah,” Cole murmurs.  “But that wasn’t your name.  I don’t know what it means.”

“Little guardian,” a deep voice answers from the tent behind them.  The Iron Bull emerges out of the opening, dressed for his turn on watch but with eyes clear: he has not been taking his sleep during his off-duty.  He glances at Cole, finishes his explanation.  “It’s what the Tamassarans would call the older kids who would keep an eye out for the young ones.”  He eyes Herah contemplatively.  “Who called you that?  The Valo-kas?”

He has bared his soul in front of her, chosen who to be and who to value.  The least she can do is offer him the truth in return.

“Children,” she says, and looks away from him because it is a struggle to keep her voice even.  “I had four younger siblings, and the village we lived was almost all Tal-Vashoth, so there were even more Vashoth children.  I was the oldest, so I looked after them all.”

He grunts, comes to the fire to take his seat for his watch.  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he says, and it’s the first normal thing he’s said in days.

Cole, too, is nodding.  “Retha-ah looks after us,” he says, voice somehow young and excited.  “She’s tall and strong and dances in the fields, and when the rain comes she sings to us so we don’t fear the lightning.”  He looks at her, gives her a wide and innocent smile.  “She loves us.” 

She smiles back at him, but it’s hard.  “I haven’t been called that in a long time,” she says, and because the memories he’s dredged up are bittersweet, the happiness of a simpler life and the longing to escape it and the end of an innocent childhod, she stands.  “Is it end of watch already?” she asks the Iron Bull.

“No,” Cole answers her, though she’s not looking at him.

“Go to sleep, kid,” the Iron Bull says without taking his eyes from Herah. 

Cole stands.  “Don’t yell at her,” he tells the Qunari as he passes him, a small pale figure contrasted against his bulk and tanned skin.  “The hurt bleeds, brushing between barriers.”

The Iron Bull only snorts; Herah isn’t sure if that should worry her or not.  Cole disappears into his own tent, leaving Herah to return silently to her seat at the low campfire with the Iron Bull.  She opens her mouth, but has no words with which to fill it.  So she shuts her lips, and says nothing, and they sit in silence for the better span of a half-hour before the Iron Bull stirs.

“Did you choose your real name?” he asks out of nowhere.  “Adaar.  It’s a weapon on Qunari dreadnoughts, the one you saw in action a few days ago.  Fire-thrower.”  His expression, when he looks up to meet her eyes, is not entirely kind.  “You’re a mage, and you focus on fire.  That seems a little too fitting, all things considered.”

“My parents chose it,” she says, and because there’s still a bit of hurt there, she hesitates.  But he deserves honesty, so she adds, “Once it became clear I was a mage, and that I was good with fire.”

He grunts, surprised.  “It wasn’t always your name?”

“No.”  She looks away from him.  “But it was the one I took with me to the Valo-kas, and it’s the one I’ve grown used to using.”

He is silent for a long time, until the fire dies down so much that she moves to pile another few logs onto it, to see them through to morning.  “When did you start thinking of yourself only as Adaar?” he asks her once she’s settled again.  “When did you know that was who you really were?”

It’s the question she’d hoped he wouldn’t ask.  She sighs, tucks chilled hands against her body rather than hold them out over the rising flames.  “I never did,” she answers quietly, unable to meet his eyes, wondering if he’s really Hissrad beneath the Iron Bull.  “They called me Herah, before.  That’s still how I think of myself.”

“Herah,” he says, as though he’s testing the name.  He gives it the same accent those who grew up speaking Qunlat do, a slight lilt to the last syllable, a bit more stress on the first.  She chances a look at him; he seems surprised.  “That’s who you think you really are, underneath Inquisitor and Herald and Adaar?”

“I’m all of them,” she replies honestly, because Cole had been right: she doesn’t abandon names or cast off old ones.  Instead, they build on each other, a wall defining her, and she has kept every name and pet name and slur that’s been used to single her out.  She is many things, and she can’t pare herself down to simply one. 

His lips twist into a grimace of thought, and then he says, “I chose the name Iron Bull.  Put a ‘the’ in front of it, so I sounded like some mindless beast, barely contained, just to remind myself that I wasn’t.”  He inhales a deep breath, and exhales just as slowly.  “It was supposed to be a cover.  The Iron Bull, a Tal-Vashoth mercenary.”  His second breath is just as slow, just as deliberate.  “Now it’s the truth.”

They sit at the fire together in silence after that, because Herah has nothing to add.  After a long while, the Iron Bull stirs.  “Your watch is over,” he tells her conversationally.  “Go get some sleep.”

She stands almost reluctantly.  “You’ll be all right?” she asks him, expecting a grunt or a gesture or some flippant response.

She’s surprised when he asks her a question.  “You don’t say my name often,” he says.  “I noticed that earlier, wondered why.  You told Gatt my name was Iron Bull, but you don’t call me that.  You call me Bull, sometimes, when I can surprise it out of you, but it’s not a regular thing.  Why?”

“I – “  And Herah shuts her mouth, stops to consider.  When she does speak, she picks her words carefully.  “It was deliberate, at first.  Now it’s just habit.  I didn’t want to offend you,” she says, and he snorts in disbelief.  She tilts her head, points out her reasoning.  “You’re a Ben-Hassrath and a mercenary captain, and underneath the whole Herald Inquisitor thing, I’m just Herah Adaar, a mercenary lieutenant and a mage.  Qunari and Vashoth.  Without the Inquisition…”  She shrugs, tries to keep her voice light.  “I’m well aware of what Ben-Hassrath can do to me.  I didn’t want to give you any cause to notice me, to be offended that I used your name like I thought we were equal.  I didn’t want to like you, to be friends, to see it coming.  And by the time we were friends… well, it’s habit, I suppose.”

He snorts.  “You think too much,” he says.  “Look.  Call me what you want, boss.  It’s all right.  Herah Adaar and the Iron Bull, yeah?  Vashoth and Tal-Vashoth, Inquisitor and captain.  It’ll be all right.”  And then, after a pause just too long to be the natural space for a breath, “Herah,” he adds, and she’s not sure if he’s calling her name to keep her attention or just saying it again to grow used to the sound.  “Do you know what that means?”

She doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t give her time to say anything in any case.

“Queen,” he tells her.  “Well, really, a female ruler who doesn’t have to obey anyone else’s orders, but yeah, queen, that’s pretty close.” 

His little sidetracked correction is the closest she’s seen to the Iron Bull she’s grown to consider a friend in days, and Herah can’t stop the hopeful smile she gives him, nor her little laugh.  “Does that mean I can do what I want?” she teases.

His eye is bright in the firelight.  “Born free, weren’t you?” he responds, taking her joke seriously.  “It’s a good name for a Vashoth.  Strong.  Hopeful.”  He looks her over again, as though reconciling this new name with the Inquisitor he’s known for almost two years.  “Herah.  Yeah, I can see that.”

“Hey,” she says, sharply, so that he meets her eyes.  “It doesn’t change anything.”

She’s not sure if she’s talking about the fact that he’s now Tal-Vashoth or the fact that he now knows her name.

“It already has,” he says, and turns his attention back to the fire. 

They reach Skyhold the next afternoon.  Another three days, and the Chargers arrive; that same day, Gatt slinks through the front gate to confront them both.

Gatt’s angry, Herah thinks from where she watches him confront Iron Bull.  He feels betrayed, and he’s lashing out at the one who disappointed him; he’s frightened, because if Iron Bull went Tal-Vashoth, what does that mean for him?  But he’s still full of a convert’s faith, and he can denounce Bull even as he worries about what Bull’s defection means for him.

Herah feels superfluous to the conversation.  Gatt leaves, angry and hurt and frightened, and with him go whatever fading hopes of an alliance he had carried.  She has no doubt that once he’s safely back amongst friends, he’ll seek out someone to beat the fear out of him.

Worried, she looks from Gatt’s slumped shoulders to the Iron Bull.  But the newest Tal-Vashoth is standing straight and tall as he strides towards the practice ring, already bellowing for his Chargers to move their sorry asses, to stop slacking off, to get back to work, that their half-day march to reach Skyhold by noon is no excuse not to spend the afternoon in drills.

Krem stops by Herah, already strapping a shield to his arm in preparation for his captain’s exercises.  “Well, I suppose that answers that,” the Tevinter says, cinching straps tight around his forearm.  “Guess the Chief won’t be writing many letters home anymore.  What happened to that dreadnought?  We were all wondering.”

Herah looks down at Krem – he’s shorter than she is – and feels like she’s been struck by lightning.

He doesn’t know.

Krem and the Chargers have no idea that their captain betrayed his heritage for them.

“Adaar?” Krem prompts, because that’s the name he knows her by.

She blinks, shakes her head, and looks from Krem over to where Iron Bull is striding back and forth in the practice ring, berating the mercenaries he abandoned his world to save. 

“There were some mages,” she says vaguely, still watching Iron Bull move in the practice ring.  She likes his confidence, the roll of his shoulders when he settles himself, the bounce in his steps.  “Bull made a call, and Gatt didn’t like it.”  She looks back to Krem, offers an apologetic smile.  “More complicated than that, of course, but that’s what it boils down to.”

“You horned lot are always complicated,” Krem complains, testing the grip on his shield.  “And when did you start calling the Chief Bull, by the way?”

Krem is sergeant of the Chargers for a reason: he’s almost as observant as his captain.  Herah laughs despite herself, feeling suddenly lighter, at peace with the world.  “I liked the call he made,” she tells Krem, and pounds her fist against his shield.  Krem braces against the blow, tests his grip, and nods, adjusting the shield’s fit slightly in the wake of her assault.  “Go get to work, Vint,” she teases, hitting his shield again to allow him to finalize the fit of the straps around his arm.  “Someone’s got to beat you into shape.”

“Hey, you’re a mage, Your Worship – what do mages know about melee, anyway?” Krem tosses back at her good-naturedly, and he turns toward the practice ring.  “Hey, Chief, stop picking on the new recruits!  We want them to actually stick around!”

Iron Bull turns, sees Krem standing by Herah, and lets loose a laugh.  “Krem!  Get your ass over here and get that shield up – I want to show the new kids what it looks like when a Vint can’t do a proper shield bash.” 

“More like you want to show them what it looks like to pick on someone half your size,” Krem retorts, but he’s smiling.  “Wish me luck,” he says as an aside to Herah as he starts forward.

“You won’t need it,” Herah says, watching him go.  “He’ll go easy on you.  He likes you.”

“Ha!” Krem barks with a grin, looking back over his shoulder at her.  “Not so sure about that.”

He climbs over the low fence into the practice ring, and barely has five seconds to set his feet and brace before the Iron Bull charges him.  Krem is grinning, bright and happy and fierce as he raises his shield and shoves.

The Iron Bull laughs as he is forced aside, his attack blunted, and Herah, on the sidelines, smiles until her cheeks hurt and her scar is pulled tight across the corner of her mouth.               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. And at last, I can begin to refer to the Iron Bull as something other than "the Iron Bull" when writing him, as Herah now has permission to use only bits of his name. It was a deliberate choice to use his full, formal name in narrative until this point; after this conversation, expect the narrative - which is, technically, from Herah's third-person view - to call him variously the Iron Bull, Iron Bull, or even just Bull.
> 
> 2\. Retha-ah only sort of actually means little guardian, according to online resources on Qunlat. "Reth-" seems to be a root word meaning "protect", so I took it as close enough.
> 
> 3\. Herah does not actually mean "queen". (It means "time", as far as I can tell.) But for this narrative, I liked the meaning, and so I ran with it even after the internet stuff on Qunlat proved me wrong. Herah's name is obviously similar to Hera, Greek Queen of the Gods, which is likely how my brain connected Herah to "queen". All of my other Inquisitors have personalized names rather than default Bioware settings, but for some reason, Herah really worked for me as she was. So I guess my personalization was just to change what the name meant, rather than the whole name entirely.
> 
> 4\. Adaar does in fact mean "fire-thrower", referring to the specific type of cannon on a Qunari warship. My husband played a Qunari mage before I did, and luckily enough I overheard that conversation before I created my own Qunari mage, who obviously had to be a fire-based mage if her name was Adaar.


	9. Chapter 8

## 8

They’re in the final countdown to Halamshiral, and Josephine has insisted that they prepare for an Orlesian banquet properly: that means fancy Orlesian dinners, a few times a week, so that none of them do anything embarrassing when they’re on display at the Empress’s court.  Herah, never one to suffer alone, brings most of her inner circle into the tutorial: the first few dinners they had all struggled together under the watchful eyes of those with grace and social skill, but that was a month ago.  Now Vivienne rarely corrects how Herah holds her spoon, and Leliana has stopped shaking her head every thirty seconds, and aside from Sera – who all agree is deliberately hopeless – the rest of them are doing all right.

They sit at a long table in a private room off the main hall to eat together, and even though they’re eating nothing fancy or unusual, the servants bring it to them in courses on different plates so they can grow used to when to switch forks and when to reach for the small goblet instead of the larger one.  The meals are lighthearted, for the most part, and like most things Orlesian involve a great deal of wine; by the time the meals are over, most of them are well on their way to tipsy, and so Herah is not surprised when occasionally the gathering lasts longer than the meal and a few of them linger to drink and talk.

Varric stays, of course: he won’t miss a story.  The Iron Bull stays for the camaraderie, Herah knows, and the cynical part of her wonders if it’s a habit born of being a Ben-Hassrath, to learn as much as he can about his compatriots.  Blackwall stays, for the fellowship and simple laughter found in drink; Cassandra stays because she’s worried what might happen if she doesn’t and because that’s the excuse she uses to let herself relax for once.  Sera wants to stay, but usually pronounces them boring after three drinks and abandons them for less sedate pursuits when they refuse to leave the room for her wild plans.  Dorian is hit or miss: some nights he’ll stay and others he’ll go.  Solas leaves without comment; Cole watches from the corner without speaking a word; Vivienne sweeps from the room in elegant disapproval.  Leliana looks as though she wants to stay, sometimes, but most of the time she slips away wordlessly.  Josephine stays occasionally, and once in a while they’ll detain Cullen; but usually it’s just the same few of them sitting around trading stories and drinks around the hearth.

They talk about anything and everything.  Some nights are quiet, filled with thoughtful questions and intelligent debate; others are raucous, with laughter and stories and dares.  Occasionally, when it’s been a long night and none of them want to take anything too seriously, they’ll play the old tavern games that somehow always seem to pop up around campfires the world over and always involve personal questions and more alcohol than is wise to consume.

Herah likes the nights Dorian stays, if only because he’s close to her in age, and she doesn’t feel so much behind the others.  Dorian is a bare year older than her; Iron Bull is nearly ten years her elder, with Cassandra a few years past him and Blackwall even older than her.  Herah dislikes feeling young and inexperienced, and is grateful when Dorian stays to help round out the group.  Sera, of course, is even younger than everyone else, but then Sera has done so much in her short life that it’s her youth is rarely a comfort.

There’s something valuable in how honest they can be with each other, something pure and freeing in being able to speak truth so bluntly knowing that everyone can walk away as friends afterwards.  It doesn’t ease the embarrassment in the moment, Herah finds – her face flames a dull red when she stands in front of the group to sing a song from her childhood as a dare.  But opening up and being vulnerable has its own reward; the group tightens and becomes stronger because of it.

They go around the room, taking turns asking questions, and then in turn revealing answers or drinking to conceal them.  There are shouts of laughter and disbelief, sympathetic murmurs, and the occasional awkward silence as questions are asked and answered, cheered and regretted.  Herah learns that Cassandra’s lover died at the Conclave, that Iron Bull has no preference between men or women, that Blackwall hasn’t shaved his beard completely in more than two decades, that Varric once grew a beard but shaved it before it was a week old, that Dorian can perfectly recite an ancient Tevinter erotic saga in rhyming couplets even while drunk.  She learns that Varric’s brother is in a sanatorium, that Cassandra has a scar neatly bisecting her thigh from a failed training exercise, that Dorian once dressed in full Tevinter Templar armor after losing a bet with Felix, that Blackwall can speak perfect Orlesian, that the Iron Bull lost half two of his fingers to a mercenary with a broadsword.

The others learn that she joined the Valo-kas when she was seventeen, that she shudders when seaweed brushes against her legs, that she loves the glass windows in Andrastrian chantries but dislikes the scent of the incense there, that she has an admitted weakness for pears.

The conversation shifts towards the risqué, of course, because such tavern games involving drinks and brutal honesty always inevitably wind up discussing bedroom affairs.  Blackwall wants to know how old Qunari are when they start going to the Tamassarans for sex; he seems disappointed when the Iron Bull tells him that it would depend on the individual.  The two go off in a tangent after that, eventually agreeing that Blackwall started too early at fifteen and Bull too late at twenty; Herah stays still and keeps her mouth shut, but of course that never works to end awkward topics. 

Varric is the one to ask the question that turns the conversation serious instead of silly: “So how old were you, Seeker, when you took your first lover?” he teases, after admitting he himself was seventeen for his first time.  “I ask for biographical purposes, of course.”

Cassandra’s fingers tighten around her wineglass, but let no one say the woman is neither brave nor honest.  “Twenty-six,” she says shortly, and the room goes silent.  “I wanted it to mean something,” she adds stiffly.

Friendship and loyalty to a woman she admires won’t let Herah stay silent, so she swallows her own pride and speaks into the awkward silence.  “I was twenty-four,” she tells the other woman.  “Same for me.”

Cassandra gives her a wan, somehow embarrassed smile, and Varric, as if to atone for the awkward question, blurts, “I’ve only ever slept with one woman.”

“You?” Blackwall asks, genuinely shocked.  “Seriously?  But you write _romances_ …”

Iron Bull roars with laughter and slaps Varric’s shoulders.  The dwarf nearly falls out of his chair.  “Vivid imagination, huh?” he laughs.  “Well, don’t ask me how many I’ve slept with; I’ve lost count.”

"I can imagine,” Varric says drily, and eyes him warily.  “Have you ever slept with a dwarf?  You know, and didn’t break her?  Or him?”

“Nah,” he replies.  “But mostly just because there aren’t that many of you guys on the surface.  You volunteering?”

“Ugh,” Cassandra says, and Blackwall chuckles.

“I’ve slept with a dwarf,” the Warden volunteers.  “And an elf.  Mostly humans, though.  And not many, recently.”  He eyes Varric speculatively.  “Just one, eh?  I bet it was a dwarf.”

“Dwarf,” Varric confirms.  And he doesn’t have to even speak the question; he just looks at the ladies with his eyebrows slightly raised.

"Humans,” Cassandra says in response, and then it’s obviously Herah’s turn.

“One Qunari,” she admits.  “Three humans.”

Everything devolves from there, because obviously alcohol is a factor, into a discussion about how the races fit with each other and what is and isn’t physically possible.  It leaves Cassandra with her face flaming red and her interest unwillingly piqued, Varric claiming all sorts of ideas for future novels in fascinated thought, Iron Bull greatly amused, Blackwall vaguely impressed, and Herah speculating a great deal more than she’d like to on the size of Iron Bull’s fingers.

The next morning most of them have headaches – except Varric, who seems immune to hangovers – but they can all look each other in the eye and chuckle without blushing. 

Friends, Herah thinks with satisfaction, and likes the certainty of knowing it’s the truth.

Then the Iron Bull corners her one afternoon as she leaves Josephine’s solar and her dancing practice.  “I’ve got a theory,” he says, falling into step with her as she crosses the Great Hall.  “Want to hear it?”

“Sure,” she says.  “What’s it’s about?”

“Why you didn’t like me at first,” he says easily, and when her steps falter, he stops with her.  “Oh, don’t bother to deny it.”

Because it’s true, she doesn’t.  Instead, after peering up at him, she shrugs.  “All right,” she says, and heads towards the main doors out to the upper bailey.  “What’s this theory?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”  Puzzled, she glances at him as he pushes the door open.  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

He waits until they are outside, until they’ve walked down the staircase and crossed the practice yard, until they’re practically to the tavern.  Bull changes his path, and she shifts her own steps to stay in pace with him, and finds that he’s led them behind the tavern, to the cool shaded corner where the tavern wall joins the walls of Skyhold.  It’s a quiet place, undisturbed and out of the way – Cassandra practices near here, Herah knows, for exactly those qualities.

In that more private space, the Iron Bull looks down at her with a serious expression and says, quietly, “The first Ben-Hassrath you met, the one who tried to make you Saarebas – he was your first lover.  You loved him, and he betrayed you.”

It is not phrased as a question.

Herah takes a slow, tight breath.  It streams out of her in the cool spring morning, a puff of mist that blows between them as she looks up at Iron Bull.  “How did you figure that out?” she asks instead of denying it.

Bull crosses his arms, staring down at her.  “You didn’t have sex until you were twenty-four,” he says.  “You’ve tried sex for love and sex without, and you wanted your first time to mean something, so that means your first time, you loved him.  You said you’ve slept with one Qunari – and you’re careful enough with your words that you meant Qunari, not Tal-Vashoth or Vashoth.”  He lifts a brow.  “How am I doing?”

Herah learned long ago to own her mistakes.  She doesn’t allow herself to be embarrassed, to look away, to be coquettish.  “You’re right,” she instead acknowledges calmly.

He meets her eyes evenly, confident and honest.  “That’s why you didn’t like the Ben-Hassrath,” he says.  “He betrayed you.”

“Yes,” she says.

To her complete astonishment, he winces.  “Damn,” he says, and he sighs, dropping his arms and his head.  “No wonder you didn’t like me.”

She takes two slow breaths, watching him.  He’s upset, she realizes.  Angry.  Carefully, trying not to misjudge him, she reaches out, places one of her hands on the massive bulk of his arm.  Her skin is a different shade than his, a burnished grey against his lighter grey skin.  Her coloring is just a bit darker, like storm clouds compared to fog, and her hand looks small against the bulky muscles of his arm. 

“Do you want the whole story?” she asks quietly, not quite able to meet his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he returns.

She tilts her head.  “I think so,” she says simply, surprised to find herself speaking the truth.  She’s not embarrassed by it, she discovers, prodding at the memories like she would poke at a still-healing bruise.  Thinking about it doesn’t bring back the rage and shame she’d expected. 

Before she’d been the Herald of Andraste, she thinks, this had come so close to breaking her that even remembering it hurt.  Now, though, she picks her way through the memories and wonders that they mean so little to her. 

“His name was Kosrin,” she says, and the sting that comes with that name – embarrassment, shame, regret – isn’t as sharp as she expects.  The wound, like her lip, has scarred over, and it’s a relief to tell the story as just facts, pure and simple, a record of events that can no longer tie into her emotions and leave her trembling. 

“He joined the Valo-kas about five years after I did – said he was a Tal-Vashoth from Nos Tellan.  He was an archer.”  A faint memory surfaces, brings with it positive emotions instead of shame.  “I loved his hands, his shoulders.  He had a band of muscle right here –“ and she lifts her hand up Bull’s arm, traces his pectoral muscle from end to end with relaxed fingertips.  “I wanted to reach out and touch it whenever he picked up his bow.  I could barely draw it halfway and he could just string it and pull it back without any effort.”

“That’s just lust,” Iron Bull tells her, his voice quiet and nearly amused.

“Yes,” Herah agrees honestly.  “I’d watch his hands, his eyes, how he stood, how he talked – and he noticed me.”  She takes her hand from Bull’s chest, looks away.  “He started to seek me out, to spend time with me.  To compliment me.”  Because she remembers the swell of emotion that corresponds to her story, she sighs.  She thinks back on the delight, the pride, the nerves, and she recalls it through a hazy veil of memory tinged with regret and acceptance.  “I fell in love, of course.  He did all the right things.”

“Ben-Hassrath are good at manipulating people,” Bull says, tone neutral.

“Yes,” she agrees.  She doesn’t look at him.  “I’m sure I was an easy target.  I had seven years or so with the Valo-kas at that point.  I’d tried so hard to prove I didn’t need to lean on anyone else, and now here I was finally deciding to let someone in.  I wasn’t so confident then, so… certain of who I am.  He made me feel like I was important, special.  He said he loved me, and I believed him.”  She grimaces, feels the Iron Bull shift beside her.  But the emotion she expects – bitter regret, that swamping feeling of failure in the pit of her stomach – it isn’t there.  Mild regret, yes; a kind of resigned acceptance… but nothing overwhelming.

Herah takes a breath, revels in how free and whole she feels even as she goes over what was once the worst experience of her life.  Is this what comes of being the Inquisitor: the grace to look back on her failures without the slick burn of shame?  So she plunges on with the story.  “I slept with him, of course.  That’s what you do when you’re in love, isn’t it?  I slept with him, and loved him, and fell asleep in his bed.  Then I woke up with my arms and legs bolted to the floor.”

He curses, softly, in Qunlat – something she half-remembers as an oath involving a lack of honor and internal organs.  It startles her into looking up at him; his face is impassive and glacial, and she finds herself speaking calmly to reassure him.  “He told me that I was Saarebas, that the Qun would give me purpose and security, that he would be my savior and grant me the guiding hand that I needed.” 

The Iron Bull’s single eye is steady on hers, intent and focused.  She thinks back to the scene she is describing, allows herself to remember it in perfect clarity for the first time in years.  “He had a saw, a bone needle, and thick black twine.  He told me he’d start with my mouth, so I couldn’t distract him from what he needed to do.”

Bull’s eyes slide down her face, to the scar that starts at the corner of her upper lip.  “He pierced the needle through the top of my lip,” she continues, remembering.  It is a struggle now, to keep her voice even, but she is strong enough to tell the whole story.  Besides, it’s the physical pain now that hurts to recall – the helplessness, the feel of the needle, the dreams she has where he still stands over her to finish the job – and not the heartbreak she’d been so sure would never pass. 

That heartbreak now is all but absent, a remembered echo of disappointment and not a raw wound, so her lips turn upwards into a satisfied smile that pulls her scar taut.  She doesn’t mind the tug of stretching scar tissue. 

“He put the needle through my upper lip, and pulled the thread tight.”  She wants to touch her mouth, to feel the healed skin under her fingertips, but instead she smiles wider.  She feels the scar pull thin and snug: there’s a bit of pain, yes, as there always is, but now the pain satisfies her.  Before, that pain had been a reminder of her failure, her loss; now Herah feels scar tissue twinge in protest as her smile widens, and she enjoys the familiar sharp sting of the scar stretched tight is because it means she has grown used to smiling again. 

“I’d been fighting to get free, of course.  He went to start the second stitch – had it almost through my bottom lip – and I burned him alive.”  Her fingers twitch, remembering, and she’s satisfied and proud even as she remembers her screams mingling with his.  He’d jerked, when her magic had come to life; the needle had scored across her skin and left a bloody trail down her face when his hand had been forced away.  She remembers the hot feel of it, the slice of agony as they both had screamed, and finishes her story with an even voice.  “I have always been good with fire, and even without my staff, even with my hands bound, I could call enough fire to kill him.”

“That’s my girl,” the Iron Bull murmurs without taking his gaze from the scar on her lips.  He shakes his head, fascinated.  “You know you broke him, right?”

“Kosrin?”  She shakes her head, disagrees with Bull.  “I killed him.”

“That too,” he agrees.  He lifts his hand, touches a finger very lightly – gently – against her scar.  “But I meant before that.”

“All I know is I killed him.”  Because the memory of it is so very strong, because Bull’s finger is warm against her skin, she hauls in a breath of cold spring air.  Because she’s proud of it now instead of sorrowing or raging, her smile is solid, certain.  “It set me apart – the Vashoth mage who killed the Ben-Hassrath who tried to make her Saarebas.  Shokrakar noticed me, after that.  Told me I had talent, started putting me to real work.  She let me prove myself.”  She lifts her chin, voice flat and proud.  “Killing him proved to everyone I was strong.”

“You broke him,” Bull repeats, sounding impressed.  He taps her scar again, and then rests the pad of one finger on the corner of her lip over her scar.  “This?  I think I told you once, Ben-Hassrath sent after mages aren’t supposed to do this.  You broke him.”

“Maybe I did,” Herah allows.  She shakes her head; his finger falls away.  “He sure as hell nearly broke me.”

“No,” he corrects.  “He hurt you, yes – pride and heart and body.  But he didn’t come close to breaking you.  He forged you.”

She laughs before she can help herself, loose and free now that the story has been told and she feels no shame in it.  “Blades are beat to hell in a forge.”

“And emerge stronger for it,” he counters.  His smile is tight, some kind of fierce she hasn’t seen before, but broad and honest.  “Look at you now.  You’re all right, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she says, and because she’s honest, “It took a long time to get here afterwards, though.”

Bull looks down at her as though he’s studying her, his smile fading, and then he shakes his head.  “It’s a wonder you didn’t simply torch me the moment I told you I was Ben-Hassrath.”

“I did offer, if you recall,” she says drily, and is rewarded with his easy-going grin.

“So you did,” he agrees.  He reaches for her arm, seems to reconsider, and instead slings his arm over her shoulders.  It’s heavier than she expected, warm and solid, and he uses it to turn her so that he can lead her to the tavern.  “And since I made you dredge up old war-stories, I think it’s only fair that I buy you a drink to help forget them.”

“That wasn’t a war story,” she protests, but it’s a mild argument and they both know it’s no real objection.

“Sex, fire, heartbreak, betrayal, losses even in victory?  Sure it was,” the Iron Bull says.  “What else do you think war is?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kind comments I've received on this fic. I am greatly enjoying the process of writing it, and I'm pleased it's turning out well enough that others like it, too. I am currently managing to stay a few chapters ahead of my posting at this point, but still am not entirely sure how many chapters yet remain. I will attempt to keep you appraised if that changes.


	10. Chapter 9

## 9

For the first time since childhood, Herah feels comfortable in her skin.

There is something powerful about discovering that the past does not bind her, about knowing that she is who she is by her choices and her determination.  She can laugh freely, speak her mind without fear, and dare to be who she truly is without worry. 

_Inquisitor_ no longer seems to loom over her like a death threat.  That iron collar sits well on her collarbones now, encircling her neck like a well-worn and well-loved necklace.  _Herald_ carries the weight of faith and hope for a better future, and Herah knows she is up to the task of bringing that future to life.  _Adaar_ is true and welcome – fire-bringer, weapon, neither feared nor scorned but cultivated and respected, deployed as needed and with respect.

_Adaar_ , her friends call her, with smiles and laughter and wry exasperation, or _Herald,_ or _Inquisitor_. 

_Lady Adaar_ , Josephine addresses her, ever polite; _Lady High-and-Mighty Adaar_ , Sera teases her, with a twinkle in her eyes and irreverence in her tone; _Lady Adaar_ , says Blackwall with the careful courtesy of a chevalier. 

_Inquisitor_ , Cullen names her, solid and secure in his role as her general; _Inquisitor,_ Solas says, and his words carry somber weight and deliberation when he addresses her; _Inquisitor,_ Scout Harding greets her, her cheer turning the title into something glad and easy; _Inquisitor_ , says Dorian, the word at once a title and a challenge; _Inquisitor_ , Vivienne chides, expectant and proud.

_Herald_ , Cassandra says, her faith still burning in her like a brand; _Herald,_ Varric rumbles, in friendship tinged with the belief that she is something more; _Herald_ , Leliana wonders, wanting to believe and unable to truly commit to it.

_Friend_ , Cole whispers to her in the dark spaces above the tavern: _friend_ and _true_ and _retha-ah_ and _bright, so bright, you’re shining._

_Adaar_ , Krem says when they share their meals and free time; _Your Worship,_ he uses when they’re working, with that blunt Tevinter accent and professional mien that makes the honorific seem less of an affectation and more of a fact.

_Adaar_ , Bull greets her with a grin.  _Boss,_ he says when they’re working, when she asks his opinion or for his effort, when he tries to convince her to let him do something she’s not certain is wise.

_Herah_ , he calls her, in a strange thoughtful tone, at the oddest of times – but always when they’re alone and none are near to hear the way he lingers over her oldest name.

It sends a shiver down her spine, a small little frisson of awareness of the way his mouth shapes the name that she does her best to push aside before he can notice it.

She’s on the rooftop eating cookies with Sera – they’re atrocious but that’s not the point – when Sera abruptly speaks.  “So I’ve got to ask,” she says.  “Do you Qunari have something strange going on when it comes to sex and stuff?  Like, attraction stuff to make people like you, or something like that?”

Herah doesn’t choke on the dry crumbs of her cookie, but it’s a near thing.  “What, like sex magic?”

“Eugh,” Sera says, and wrinkles her nose.  “What, you can put magic in sex?  Eugh, wait, no, forget I asked, I don’t want to know about it.  Trust magic to screw up something fun.”  She shudders.  “No, I mean like the before bits, the getting people to want to do it with you – is it the horns?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Herah says, completely bewildered.

“I mean, like you’re you, right, and before I knew you I thought, well,” and her eyes crinkle with laughter, “ _woof._ ”  And she does laugh, bright and merry.  “I mean, right?  With the tall and the wearing practically nothing and the cheekbones…”

Herah laughs, too, but protests, “It’s not practically nothing – it’s antaam-saar, it’s perfectly acceptable.”

Sera snorts, elbowing her in her bare ribs.  “Maybe someplace it’s _warm_ ,” she teases.  “Here, though, it’s just like showing off a little bit, innit?  Anyway,” she drawls.  “I was just wondering, like, if you lot had something going on like – like dragons, I guess, with the smells to attract folk into liking you.”

“Not as far as I know,” Herah says, and takes another bite of her cookie.  “I mean,” she adds wickedly, “I know I’m gorgeous and all, but I’m not luring people in with pheromones or anything.”

Sera hoots.  “Pheromones!” she giggles.  “That’s the word.  Are you sure?”

“Fairly sure,” Herah affirms dryly.

“Well, piss.  I was so sure that explained Bull.  I mean, how else do you figure it?”

“Figure what?”

Sera looks put out.  “He keeps stealing all the fun ones,” she complains.  “I mean, it takes all sorts and all that, but how does a freaking scarred up old Qunari keep getting all the trim?”

Herah laughs at that, and takes a pull from the wineskin they’re sharing.  “He’s not all that old,” she points out, feeling the need to contradict her friend.  “He’s what, late thirties?”

Sera rolls her eyes.  “That’s old enough,” she says, secure in the bloom of youth.  “I just don’t get it.  He’s not that good-looking.”

“You just don’t appreciate the male form enough,” Herah says sagely, and then her façade cracks and she can’t help but elbow Sera back with a laugh.  “Or you’re just jealous he’s competition.”

“Hey, be nice, you!” she protests.  “I liked it better when he was going after the stableboys just as much and left the soldier girls to me.  Except now he’s flirting with the ones in the tavern, too, and the last one I chatted up ignored me as soon as he asked for another round.”  She flops back onto the tiles of the rooftop.  “Ugh.  He’s not even good-looking, so I figured it had to be those phero-thingies.  Cause otherwise who would want to see _that_ in their bed, right?”

Herah hesitates for just a moment too long.

Sera inhales.  “No way,” she breathes, and she groans, flinging an arm over her eyes.  “Please tell me he hasn’t had you too!”

She laughs despite herself.  “I haven’t slept with the Iron Bull,” she says, and nudges at Sera’s leg with her boot.  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“But you’ve thought about it,” Sera accuses, moving her arm so that she can peer up at Herah.  “Oh, don’t deny it now – you’ve thought about sex with him!”

Herah does her best to keep her voice light.  “Sure,” she says.  “I do think about sex, Sera,” she adds drily with a smile.  “Sometimes I even have it.”

“Bull,” Sera says, and then clarifies: “Bullshit, I mean, not Iron Bull.  You’re the Herald of Andraste – you don’t get to think about sex anymore.  I think it’s in the rules.  Saints can’t have sex.”

“Why not?” Herah asks, amused.

“Because they can’t!”  Sera sits up, glares at her, and then giggles, relenting.  “Well, that proves it more than anything ever did, I guess – that Herald business is all a bunch of piss.”

“What, because I’ve had sex?”  Herah shakes her head.  “The Chantry does say Andraste had children, doesn’t it?  How do you think that happened?”

“La la la not listening!”  But then Sera giggles.  “So!  High and mighty Lady Adaar, having sex like the rest of us.  Who with?”

“No one you know,” Herah says wryly, “and not for a long while, and thanks to this whole Herald Inquisitor thing, it’ll probably be a while before I get to go again anyways.”

“Pfft!  That’s what you think,” Sera says.  “I bet you could ask any of the men around here to fix that for you, and they’d drop britches and present, no questions, the instant you asked.  You do like men, right?”  And without waiting for an answer, “The Commander’s a pretty-boy, if you like the type, or if not, there’s Blackwall too – he’s my favorite,” she adds as an aside.  “Not that I like men – ugh, and the hair – but just look past the beard and you’d probably be set.”

Herah shakes her head, but she’s smiling.  “I think I’ll be all right,” she says.

Sera wrinkles her nose.  “You’d probably prefer Iron Bull,” she points out.  “What, you like being the small spoon or something and he’s the only one big enough?”

She huffs out a breath.  “Sera,” she says warningly.

But Sera’s warming up.  “I bet it’s because he’s a Qunari, isn’t it?  Because he’s all big and growly and scary and you horned folk are crazy for that.  Or is it the horns?  Wait, do you lot lock horns or something while you do it?”

“Not on purpose,” Herah says drily.  “But I’ve heard of it happening.”

Sera giggles, good mood restored.  “I knew it!”

Herah sighs, leans back to lie beside her on the rooftop tiles.  It’s winter, and cold out; maybe Sera’s right, and she wears the antaam-saar to prove she can and not for any practical reason, because the tiles are frosty at her back and even the warmth of the wine they’re sharing isn’t quite enough to keep her skin from prickling at the contact.  “If I admit I find the Iron Bull attractive,” she tries, “will you stop?”

“Pfft!  No.”  Sera’s grin is lightning fast, bright and friendly and affectionate.  “Now that I know you can have sex, we’ve got to get you some.  And even though _I_ think he’s a big ugly lug, no one he’s tupped has complained about him yet, so maybe you ought to go for the Bull after all.  It’d probably do you good.”  Her laugh is wicked.  “ _He’d_ probably do you good.  You know, fulfill your Qun and all that.”

“That’s not how the Qun works,” Herah informs her.  “And I don’t follow the Qun in the first place.”

“So?”  Sera waggles her eyebrows.  “Come on, Adaar, you could go for it.  Bet he’d bend you over a table right quick if you wiggled your arse at him.”

That is a mental image intriguing enough that Herah does not need to think about it.  “Sera,” she sighs.  “No.”

“Why not?”  And she looks over at Herah expectantly.  “What, is it against the rules or something?  You can’t sleep with him because he’s a Qunari?  Or you can’t sleep with anyone because you’re Inquisitor?”

“Closer to that second one,” she admits.  “It’s…”  Words fail her, so that she has to struggle to find a way to explain her thoughts.  “There’s a lot going on, and a lot of eyes on me.  I don’t have time for complications.”

“Who said it had to be complicated?” Sera demands.  “It’s supposed to be fun.  You’re allowed to do that, right, have fun?  Or do I have to go find some more pies for people’s faces?”

It’s nice, Herah thinks, to have someone who instantly comes to her defense like that, someone who thinks first and foremost of her health and happiness instead of political repercussions and harmful gossip and treaty implications. 

The Iron Bull does that for her, she remembers without meaning to think of him: a meal shared on the ramparts, a comb in her hair, soft encouragement around a watch fire.

Sera’s words seep into the defenses Herah has kept tight around her thoughts: _You’re allowed to do that, right, have fun?_   And suddenly her reasons for remaining alone with an unshared bed – politics and time and commitments and concerns – seem petty, smaller and easier to ignore.  Possibilities spin before her eyes for a brief second, dazzling and throbbing and fracturing into so many options that reality could never hold up to the fantasies she allows herself.  Maybe, she thinks, and hauls in a breath of cold air.  Maybe.

Then she deliberately turns her thoughts back to the present, and just as deliberately allows herself to change the subject, to focus on the part of Sera’s words that she can handle thinking about at the moment.  “I like pies,” she says, letting herself sound intrigued.  “Not for faces, but to eat.  I wonder if the kitchens have any?”

Sera leaps on the new subject, either to escape the old conversation or because she is easily distracted.  Herah’s never sure which it is.  “I bet they do,” she says, and sits straight up.  “Blackberry pie, I bet, with little burnt edges on the crusts.  I could nick one and they’d never notice.  Split one with me?”

Herah acts as distraction, asking the assistant cooks for a crock of cooled milk while Sera sneaks in behind them to steal the pie-pan straight off the table.  They share both in Sera’s boudoir of a tower room off of the tavern, and if Herah occasionally hears the Iron Bull’s laughter carry up past them into the rafters, then she’s able to do a decent job ignoring the pull of it.


	11. Chapter 10

## 10

Halamshiral looms over her like the hangman’s axe. 

She is not designed for politics, for pretty talking and playing the Game.  She’s designed for blunt honesty, for a mercenary’s practical outlook, and so she dreads the Winter Palace the way others might dread a long siege.  Still, Herah pushes forward – because there’s nothing else to do and because she’s at least learned to face her fears.

She studies with Josephine and Leliana when she’d rather be in the mud and dirt outside with Cullen’s soldiers and the Chargers.  She meekly submits to the tailors Vivienne recommends, shuts her mouth and listens to Dorian’s warnings about political schemes, and tells herself that any scrap of knowledge she can bring with her is an advantage.

Herah hates it, but she is Inquisitor, and she will not shirk her duty.

Still, she’s tired at the end of each day, a mental exhaustion which is almost worse than physical exhaustion.  She can at least rest her body to recover when she pushes herself too hard physically.  Her mind is harder to quiet, and more often than not she finds herself lying in her grand bed – solid carved wood with a canopy and silk sheets imported straight from Antiva’s most luxurious shops – staring up at the gauzy silk draped over the canopy and worrying over something she can’t change.

Then, on a late winter evening, she comes up the stairs to her immense bedroom after dinner one evening and finds the Iron Bull sitting on her bed.

“So,” he says, as she looks at him in blank surprise.  “I get it; I can take a hint.  You want to ride the Bull.”

Her eyebrows shoot towards her horns.  “Wait, what?” she asks, and to distract them both, she immediately follows it up with, “Do you actually call it that?”

He chuckles, but the laughter only glints in his eye as he pushes himself up off of her bed and crosses the room to stand before her.  His eye shines with merriment, but the rest of his face is serious, almost stern, focused on her.  “I’m not hearing a denial,” he counters, and looks down at her.

Herah finds that her mouth has gone dry.

He isn’t crowding her: he has the body control of a seasoned mercenary, and the awareness of his size that comes from being bigger than everyone around him.  He could use his bulk to hem her in, to trap her, to pressure her, and he’s not.

Instead, he’s standing before her like his offer: blunt and obvious and impossible to ignore.

She takes a deep breath to try to find her equilibrium, to regain her footing for what is sure to be a careful balancing act.  It’s a mistake: she breathes in the faint sting of vitaar and the scent of leather and clean sweat that clings to Iron Bull’s skin. 

“No,” she says, watching him.  “I suppose you’re not.”

Something like a smile flickers across his face – satisfaction and a gleam of something she can’t identify.  “You’ve been watching me, lately,” he says, and there’s speculation and a kind of rumbling amusement in his tone.  “More than you have before.  And you say things, sometimes, just trying to tease me.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed it.”

A reluctant smile tugs at her lips, though again she doesn’t both to deny his observations.  “I wasn’t being exactly subtle, is that what you’re saying?”  And for a moment, she regrets that: she has been looking, of course, because it would take a dead woman not to notice Bull and she’s hardly in her grave. 

He’s her friend, and she felt safe enough with him to allow herself to look, and appreciate, and wonder, to step away from Inquisitor enough to be Herah and acknowledge her attraction.  He’s ribald and risqué enough she figured it wouldn’t offend him, even if he noticed; his offer to take it a step further is certainly unexpected and not entirely unwelcomed.

Bull gives a little snort, a huff of amused breath.  “You weren’t bad, actually,” he says, and she gets the feeling it’s a compliment.  “But I am – was – Ben-Hassrath.  We’re trained to notice that kind of thing.”

“Oh?” she asks slowly, deliberately.  She should back away, out of this conversation and into safer topics about how as the Inquisitor she really shouldn’t have a dalliance with an ally, but she finds she can’t resist continuing their banter.  Herah meets his eyes with a small smile.  “And just what have you noticed, Bull?”

He chuckles, takes a single step forward so that they are almost touching.  “You come out to watch us in the practice ring,” he says, voice low.  “You laugh in the tavern when you eat with us, and you keep stealing glances when you think I’m not looking.  You watch when I go through drills with the boys – and you watch _me,_ not the others.”  He lifts his hand and brushes just his fingertips across the back of her hand where it hangs at her side.  “Like what you see, boss?” he asks.

It takes effort not to shiver.  “Who wouldn’t?” she answers, trying to keep her tone light.  “But it’s a big jump from looking to… riding,” she decides, taking his word for lack of a better one. 

He hasn’t stopped looking at her.  “Doesn’t have to be,” he says.  “But if you’re not ready, if you don’t want to – then you’re not ready, and you don’t want to.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Just thought I’d make the offer.”

The Iron Bull’s words are simple, plain.  He speaks as though he’s presenting honest truth; there’s no undercurrent threaded through his words, no subtle challenge that would tempt her to claim to be ready, to make her want to leap into bed with him just to spite him or prove him wrong.  She likes him for that honesty, for the fact that he’s so clear that this is her choice.

But making the choice hers doesn’t make it any easier to come to a decision.  The silence is growing tense, expectant and humming.  He makes no attempt to break it, to pressure her into owning her indecision.  Instead, Iron Bull simply stands and stares at her, quiet, comfortable in his skin and in her room.

He is very close to her.

Does she want to sleep with him?

Part of her is quick to agree.  There’s attraction there, of course, and has been for longer than she’s cared to admit.  All the things she’s ever admired about him contribute to it, and she’s spent the past few months more honestly assessing him than she might like.  His hands, she thinks, and how fiercely he can look at her; the breadth of his shoulders, the warmth of his chest.  She considers his pure physicality in a heartbeat – his size, his musculature, the roughness of his hands and the strength in his legs – and her breath hitches as she considers his body against hers.  It has been a long time since she’s had a lover, and longer yet since she’s had a lover she doesn’t physically overwhelm.  She can’t deny it’s tempting.  Attraction, she thinks wryly, has never been the problem.  She’s always enjoyed looking at him, even when he was Ben-Hassrath and she feared what that meant; the fact that she enjoys his mind as much as his body makes it even harder for her to resist his offer. 

But part of her – the part that can still think without wondering about the way his hands would feel on her skin – hesitates.  She is Inquisitor, after all, and her every move – personal or public – is scrutinized through the lens of politics.  But mostly, she isn’t worried about politics, and is instead concerned about what this might mean for the two of them.  They are friends, she knows, and she values that fiercely.  This might not change their friendship, if they are careful, but it opens the door to so many new potentials that it’s hard not to wonder.  Is this the last moment of their friendship?  If she refuses, will he accept her reasoning and return to their easy and familiar comradeship, or will he resent her for spurning his offer?  If she accepts, will their friendship survive this new intimacy unchanged?  Will it fade into nothing but heat and attraction, dying when the moment fades, or will it deepen into something more?

_Maybe_ , she hears echoed in her mind, and Sera’s laughter: _aren’t you allowed?_

“Bull,” she says at last, unsure, torn by indecision, at once asking him for answers and apologizing for the delay.  She doesn’t say more than that, just his name – the name he’s given her permission to call him – and she looks up at him, still trying to decide.

He lifts one large hand and reaches for her arm.  His fingers slide down her skin until they come to her wrist, and then they grip her there, encircling her tight enough that her arm is cuffed into place by the strength of his fingers.  “Adaar,” he says, and then, quietly, “Herah.”  He doesn’t give her more than that: no pressure, no decision, no influence.  After another long moment where she wrestles with herself, as though he can read her worries, he adds softly, “Nothing has to change unless you want it to.”

That’s a lie, she thinks, but she wants to believe it.  So does he, she realizes, looking up at him, and wonders if he even knows he’s lying.

She wants to believe he’s right, and that settles her mind.

“Yes,” she says simply, and doesn’t move.  She just looks up at him, at the scarred face so close to hers, at the bright dark eye and the leather of his eyepatch.  “I want this.”

Because she’s watching him so closely, she sees the subtle little shift of muscles in his jaw, the half-repressed hint of motion across his cheeks.  Almost a smile, she thinks; the way the corner of his eye crinkles makes her think he’s pleased.  But that’s the only small sign of his feelings she can see.  “Are you sure?” Bull asks calmly instead.  The pressure on her wrist increases.  “I want to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Herah takes a long breath, lets her eyes flutter shut for a moment on the scent of vitaar and warm male.  She opens her eyes, and bravely meets his gaze with a blossoming smile.  “I have a pretty good idea,” she drawls.

His laughter is low and kind.  “You say that,” he tells her, and he reaches out again, slowly, like he’s being careful not to startle her.  He takes her other hand in his, so they’re standing face-to-face, inches away from each other, hands caught between them.  His voice is that strange mix of serious and amused he does so well.  “But I want to make sure.  You’re Vashoth, so I’m pretty sure you can take it, but I know it’s been a while since you’ve had a Qunari…”

She laughs before she can censor herself.  “Think mighty highly of yourself, don’t you, Bull?” she teases.  But it’s a relief, to have him stand in front of her, being so much himself that she remembers why they are friends and why she likes him.  That relief brings certainty and a kind of joy, the knowledge that yes, this _is_ what she wants – who she wants – that she’s made the right decision.  She can’t quite bring herself to relax – his hands are on her, after all, and she’s suddenly all but vibrating in anticipation for more.  But she grins up at him, scar stretched tight.  “Try me.  I doubt you’ll break me.”

Bull considers her for a moment, satisfaction and something like pride warring for dominance on his face, and then in one swift move, he presses forward.  He pulls her arms up over her head, so that Herah’s whole body stretches out, long and tight, and before she can quite process what he’s doing, he’s pushed her several steps back.  Her back collides with the stone wall behind her, and she can retreat no further; her eyes are wide as he presses up against her.

She very nearly cries out; she knows she gasps, and the noise clearly makes Bull pleased.  She knows he’s larger than her, of course – he’s a large man, even for a Qunari.  But never before has he ever used his size as an advantage over her; if anything, he’d been careful of it around her, as though he hadn’t wanted to remind her of the strength he carried in his frame.  Now, though, he’s no longer downplaying his size.  He’s transferred both of her wrists to one of his hands – he’s large enough to keep her pinned one-handed.  It’s a very specific feat which she never before considered any kind of arousing.  Herah finds herself rapidly reconsidering that opinion, especially since with only one hand devoted to keeping her arms in place, he can slide his other hand down her body to rest it on her hip.

Iron Bull uses that hand to pull her forward against him, so she’s trapped between the cold stone behind her and his warmer body in front of her.  Her arms are caged tight above her in his hand, high enough that she’s nearly on tiptoe to relieve the strain of them, and Bull is pressed so closely against her that every breath she takes makes her breasts brush against his chest.

He leans close.  “Last chance,” he warns, words clipped and deliberate.  His voice is rich and gravelly, close enough to her ear that Herah’s flesh raises into shivering bumps at the sound of it.

Herah hauls in a shaky breath, pulse hammering in her ears, and reaffirms her decision.  She lifts her chin and looks up at him.  Then, very deliberately, keeping her eyes on his, Herah arches her back, pushing her shoulders away from the wall and her chest against the solid bulk of the Qunari in front of her.  His grip tightens, and he takes a shuffling half-step forward, claiming the space she’s just freed, so if anything she’s now caught even more firmly between him and the wall.

“Not a bad start,” Herah manages, though she’s surprisingly breathless.  “I suppose I’ll let you stay.”

She expected a laugh, maybe a kiss.  Instead, he gives her a short glance of approval, one of those looks from him that carries the weight of words that go unsaid.  Before she even realizes he’s pulled back, he’s hauling her up off the ground into his arms.  “Then I suppose I’d better impress you,” he tells her, and carries her to her bed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are interested in seeing screenshots of my Herah, I've put a few online on my tumblr: [here](http://veritysays.tumblr.com/post/149350298417/two-screenshots-herah-consults-with-iron-bull-and) and [here](http://veritysays.tumblr.com/post/149155759302/screenshots-of-my-qunari-ahem-vashoth). I'm still new at this whole tumblr thing, and don't have much original content yet, but if you're an awesome person and like DAI, I'd love to follow you, so send me a ping and I'll collect fun new blogs to read. :)
> 
> Plotting this out, it looks like about 20 chapters will take us to Trespasser or so.


	12. Chapter 11

## 11 

She wakes alone.

It takes her long moments to fully awaken.  She revels in that, in how she goes from slumber to drowsiness to alertness gradually.  There is no nightmare or disaster to cause her to sit straight up in bed, heart pounding and adrenaline ready to meet a crisis.  There no tossing or turning in her bed, her still-exhausted body desperately trying to eke out a few more moments of repast.  Instead, there’s only a slow, languorous warmth as she comes to herself.

She opens her eyes, turns her head, but her eyes merely confirm suspicions she’d already had: the Iron Bull is long gone.  Her bed is large enough for two, easily, even considering how much room Bull would take up on his own, but he hasn’t stayed.

Herah is more curious than disappointed about that fact.  In most ways, actually, it’s a relief: she has never liked the uncertainty of waking to her lovers, not since Kosrin woke her so roughly after her first time.  Waking alone, she finds, allows her time to regain her composure.

She rises from the bed and takes stock of the minor aches and bruises that she’s acquired since Iron Bull had brought her there: there are muscles protesting unfamiliar movement and a trio of oddly-spaced bruises on her hip that take Herah a long moment to remember how she earned them.  When she does, she places her own fingers against them almost in wonder, spacing out how much larger Bull’s hand is than hers to leave such fingerprints so spread out against her skin.

She is sore, certainly.  Herah expected as much – it’s been years since her last lover, and the Iron Bull is hardly a small man.  But it’s a pleasant sort of soreness, one that makes her feel satisfied and feminine.  Her lips curve, sensual and content; she does not mind the ache, and considers it a fair price for enthusiastic and mutually satisfying sex. 

She has water brought up to her, and she bathes in privacy, mind and body still humming happily from a night filled with sex and sleep.  The Iron Bull, she thinks, can justifiably be impressed with himself in bed.  He’d been both considerate and demanding, as insistent on her pleasure as he was eager to receive it in turn.  His reputation, she decides, is warranted.

And best of all, Herah thinks as she emerged clean and dripping from the bath, he hadn’t changed who he was afterwards.  He’d teased her as they both lay panting on the bed, recovering their strength.  He’d laughed at her little needling comments, and slapped at her ass when she went to collect the pitcher of water from the table, and had held her close and told her a long, drawn-out tale about the Chargers when her eyes had begun to droop.

He’d left her to sleep, she realizes, and suspects he knew how badly she needed the rest.

It’s the second time that Iron Bull has lulled her to sleep only to leave before she woke – once here, and once back at Adamant – and instead of embarrassment, Herah feels something disturbingly close to fondness for him at the thought.  It’s gratitude, she thinks, examining that feeling: relief and thanks that she has a friend who cares enough about her to let her have the peaceful sleep she so rarely receives.

She hesitates at the doorway of her room when she leaves it.  Skyhold and all the people it holds lie beyond that thick wooden door – her people and their problems, Corypheus and the chaos he’s caused, the world and the demands it’s all too quick to make.

Concerns flit through her head like gnats, second-guesses that have no place there.  Did anyone notice Bull going to her room, or how long he stayed?  Were they loud enough that someone heard?  Will servants notice the tangled sheets, or is there abandoned clothing left strewn in corners?  Does she have bruises in places people might see?  Will it be instantly obvious that she’s taken a lover?  Does she even care if people know?  If other people know, does it even matter – to them, to the Inquisition, to this delicate political dance she’s caught in with the Winter Palace?

Too, there’s a quiet thread of worry winding its way through her head: how have things changed, she wonders, between herself and the Iron Bull?  Are they still friends?  Are there expectations now, on his side or on hers, and can she – can he – meet them?  Will they?  What needs to be said, and what needs to be left unsaid, and how do they continue on as friends now that they’ve slept together?

Herah allows herself exactly a minute to stand still, fretting and worrying and filled with nerves, and then she reaches out a strong hand for the door.  She is the Inquisitor, and she knows herself; she chose Bull, and she is neither ashamed of that decision nor does she doubt her choice. 

Still, she’d hoped to speak with him sooner rather than later, so it is disappointing when Leliana spots her almost as soon as she steps into the main hall looking for lunch – she’d slept through breakfast.  One thing turns into another, and before she’s realized it, she’s agreeing to have dinner with Josephine and Vivienne to discuss Halamshiral’s social circles.

It takes her three increasingly frustrating days before things are calm enough that she can go to the tavern for a meal like usual.  When the opportunity comes, though, she finds herself dragging her feet as she slowly makes her way down to the Herald’s Rest.  That thread of worry in her mind has grown to become a ribbon – what has changed, what will be, what is different? – and it’s wound tight around her as she eases herself into the tavern.

The Chargers shout greetings to her, happy and boisterous.  They welcome her back as though she’d been gone for more than just three nights – there’s a babble of voices explaining about a drinking contest, a training exercise, the failed explosives they dealt with outside on the mountaintops. 

Iron Bull greets her with a lazy smile and a casual wave, and he gets to his feet to go to his usual spot in the back of the tavern so that she can eat.  It is the same as always, and yet it is not.

It takes effort to sit herself down next to Krem and have her supper as though nothing has changed.  Herah can’t stop thinking and second guessing everything.  Has Bull always looked at her with that little knowing gleam in his eye?  Can he see the fading bruise his thumb left on her back above her right hip?  Does he even know that the dark mark there was left by his grip? 

She eats, and talks with Krem, and plays impromptu judge when Dalish and Skinner decide Krem is not nearly neutral enough to decide which of them deserves the honor of winning an argument that has something to do with Sapper’s favorite tankard.  Herah laughs, decides in Skinner’s favor, defends herself from the onslaught of wooden forks that the disappointed Dalish throws at her, and spends a good twenty minutes listening to the story of the fabled tankard.

And she can’t stop thinking about Bull the whole time, which is infuriating.

She should be better than this, she thinks despairingly.  She’s no lovesick teenager, mooning over a crush; better, she’s no shy mercenary afraid to speak her mind.  Bull is no Kosrin, of course – but then he’s not anything like the other men she’s slept with either.  She’s enjoyed herself with others before, certainly; even Kosrin had been a pleasurable experience until she had awoken to the harsh reality of his betrayal.  She’d had lovers after Kosrin.  She’s honest enough to admit it had taken her time after her treatment at his hands to grow comfortable to do so, and she was always a little leery of the aftermath with her chosen partners.  Still, it isn’t as though she’d been a blushing virgin before Bull had bedded her.

The point, she thinks stubbornly, is that she’s done this before, and it shouldn’t be so hard.  But it feels like she’s younger and inexperienced again, tied up in knots and anxiety, and it’s driving her batty.  Perhaps this is who she was, years ago – but now she wears more names, _Herald_ and _Inquisitor_ , and now those names make her annoyed with her stuttering worries and circling anxieties.

Krem notices her souring mood.  “Want another drink, Adaar?” he asks, elbowing her in the side.  “You look like you need to stop thinking for a bit.”

She gives him a smile.  “I think I’ll go bother your boss instead,” she says, pushing herself back from the table to stand.  “That’s like not thinking.”

Krem laughs.  “Especially if you get enough drink into him,” he agrees, and clearly doesn’t see anything amiss in Herah seeking out the Iron Bull’s company.

She doesn’t like not knowing where she stands, and there’s only one solution to that.  Herah is not a coward.

The Iron Bull doesn’t move as she approaches his little throne in the back of the tavern.  He sits sprawled out, relaxed and comfortable, to all appearances unconcerned with the world around him.  But he turns his head as Herah approaches to better watch her, and his eye is dark and intent as he looks at her. 

“Hey, boss,” he says mildly as she approaches.  “What can I do for you?”

“You have a minute to talk?” she asks, and because she’s suddenly unwilling to confront him in public, she adds, “Somewhere else?”

He stands.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I can do that.”

Herah doesn’t want to have the talk in her bedroom.  She’s not entirely sure what she’s going to say, and knows even less what he will say.  Her room, though expansive, has the bed in the center of it – and given their prior activities on that bed, she doesn’t think having it sitting there as a reminder is the best course of action for a conversation she’d rather have undistracted.

They wind up in her bedroom all the same, because she doesn’t know another spot where they’re guaranteed privacy.  Leliana, at least, notices them step out of the main hall together; Herah has the uneasy feeling that she’s behaving predictably.

“So,” the Iron Bull says as they climb the stairs to her room.  “What’s on your mind, boss?”

Her breath leaves her in a whoosh.  Honesty, she thinks, as she hauls in a new breath, and she lifts her chin to meet his eyes as she steps into the main area of her bedroom.  She turns to face him, forces herself to be brave.  “You are.” 

His smile is slow and undeniably satisfied.  “Really,” he drawls, less a question and more something akin to a chuckle.

“Mm.”  And, taking her courage in her hands, she reaches out for what she wants.  She steps closer to Bull, tilts her head so she can continues to look into his eye, and puts her hands up on his chest – to touch, yes, but it’s almost defensive.  She could push him away, she thinks in the space between heartbeats, if this all goes wrong.  “I’d like the rest of you on me again, too.”

He does laugh at that, but not in a way that makes Herah feel mocked.  Instead, his laugh is low and rumbling, satisfied and amused, and she finds himself offering him a small smile in return without realizing she’d meant to move her lips.  He shifts a step forward, close enough to reach out and rest his hands on her hips.

"I thought I’d read you right,” he tells her, and his thumbs sweep across the soft skin of her belly.  “You seemed like you enjoyed yourself, at least.”

Her fingers are resting just below a long, wide scar that crosses his chest, and she resists the urge to distract herself by tracing it with her fingertips.  Instead, she presses her fingers more firmly against his skin to keep them still, and keeps herself on task.  “I did,” she says, and honesty compels her to add, with no small amount of frustration, “and now I can’t stop thinking about it.” 

He laughs again, quiet and pleased with himself, and her gaze becomes a glare. “You needed it,” he says kindly to soothe her annoyance, and lifts one hand from her hip to grip her wrist instead.  “You carry a lot of weight, boss, and you haven’t had a chance to cut loose and relax in a while.”  He lifts her hand from his chest, raises it to press her palm against his lips.  “I can give you that.  I’m not surprised it stuck with you.”

His lips are warm and dry; there’s a very faint hint of stubble around them, but no more than usual.  Herah can’t not remember where else his mouth has been, and that memory colors her tone when she does speak.  “I liked it,” she admits, though _like_ is a fairly tame word for her reaction to their encounter.  She pulls her hand back from his mouth, curls her fingers over her palm.  “I’ve never really had anyone – never really done it like – never tried…”  And she struggles for the words to explain how Bull had made her feel, because yes, it had been energetic and very enthusiastic sex, but it had been different from any other time she’d taken a man to bed.  He’d been forceful and commanding, a more demanding lover than she’d ever had before, and she lacks the words to explain how much she enjoyed his insistence on her pleasure.

It was just sex, but sex as she’d never had it before, and she gives up trying to explain it.  Instead, “I liked it,” she repeats again, unable to articulate entirely why.

Bull’s eyes crinkle with amusement.  “Good,” he says.  “I thought you would.”  He considers her for a long moment, thumb still idly stroking up and down her midsection from where his hand rests on her hip, and finally, when he speaks, he does so with measured and carefully chosen words.  “Ben-Hassrath are taught how to read people – how to manipulate people.  I grew up with it.  You get to the point where it’s almost as easy as breathing – what to do, what to say, how to look to get the response you want.”  He meets her eyes without flinching, brutal in his honesty.  “Your first lover did that to you.”

Because it’s true, she can’t argue with him.  “Yes,” Herah says. 

He nods.  “When it’s a hostile target,” he says, like he’s giving a lesson, “you give them what they want.  But when it’s someone you care about,” and he gives her the barest of smiles, his one dark eye intent on her, “you give them what they need.”

His words echo in her head, and she knows he’ll give her the time to decipher them.  So she stands still, looking up at him, letting the words settle into sense.

“What they need,” she repeats slowly, and there’s a spark of warmth in her.  “That’s what it was about?  What I needed?”

His shrug is small, contained.  “Mostly,” he says.  The Iron Bull trails his fingers across her skin.  “Part of it was just me, how I am.  I like to be in charge, and,” he adds, with no false modesty, “I’m good at it.  And you’re tough enough to take it.  But put that with you maybe needing a break, maybe wanting someone else to call the shots for a while…  Well, I thought it might help.”

Herah takes a breath, more touched than she expected by the knowledge that he cares enough for her to want to help her, to take care of her, to give her this.  “We’re friends, Bull.  I want it to stay that way.”

“I know,” he says, and rough fingers touch her face, gently tracing her cheekbones.  “And because we’re friends, when I realized I could give you this – and that you might accept it – I offered.”

She reaches for his hand, and takes it with both of hers.  Because it’s hard to look at him as she speaks, she studies his hand instead: the strong blunt fingers, the dozens of small scars, the callouses and the stumps where he’s lost parts of himself. 

“I’m glad,” she says quietly, “that you did.”

“Good,” the Iron Bull says simply.  He sounds oddly serious when he asks, “So.  You said you wanted to go again?”

Herah laughs before she can help it, brief and wry, and looks up from tracing the lines on his palm.  “I don’t know how to do this,” she admits.  “I mean, I want to – I liked it –“

“I could tell,” he interrupts, sounding satisfied.

“- but I don’t know how to…”  And she trails off, squeezing her fingers around his hand.  She forces herself to speak quickly.  “I don’t know how to have a friend for a lover.  I’ve never tried before.  I don’t know how it works.  And don’t,” she adds sharply, “pretend like you know any better.  You said it yourself: in the Qun, you don’t sleep with your friends.”

Iron Bull hums, shortly, as though he agrees with her caution.  “That’s true,” he admits.  “But hey, Tal-Vashoth now, right?”  And the smile he gives her is still a bit shattered, a little empty, so that she feels the guilt ring hollowly through her stomach that she is the one responsible for diminishing his great.  He must see the shift in her facial expression, because his demeanor changes.  His half smile fades.  “We’ll be all right, Herah,” he says gently.  “It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

 _It already is,_ she thinks despairingly, hearing her name on his lips.

“How?” she asks plaintively instead.

He regards her seriously for a moment, and then he asks simply, “Do you trust me?”

The question surprises her into a completely honest answer.  “Of course,” she says.

His smile is slow and full of wicked promise.  “Will you trust me with this?”

It takes her a second to process what he’s asking, but when she understands, she takes a deep breath.  “Yes,” she says on the exhale.

He moves his hands, bringing them again to her wrists.  A tingle of memory skitters across her skin as she recalls what happened the last time he cuffed her wrists with his hands, and her heartbeat quickens. 

“Ground rules,” he tells her somberly, standing in front of her.  “Outside, you’re in charge.  You’re in the Inquisitor, and I won’t mess with that.  I don’t need to,” he adds.  “You’re strong enough to carry that, and you’re doing a damn good job with it.  Inside, though, when it’s just the two of us – you don’t need to carry the weight of everything.  You can trust me to take care of you.”  He leans down, so that their eyes are nearly even as he looks at her.  “I will never hurt you without your permission.  You will always be safe.  If you are ever uncomfortable – if you ever want me to stop – say _katoh_ , and I’ll stop, no questions asked.”

“Katoh,” she echoes, the Qunlat foreign on her tongue, and she watches as Iron Bull nods in approval.  She keeps her eyes on his.  “What’s my part of the trade?”

“Trade?” he asks, and his fingers twitch a bit tighter on her wrists.

She can’t shrug without somehow implying that she wants him to take his hands off of her, and she’s quite enjoying the contact.  So instead she keeps her shoulders and voice even.  “Back when we first started really talking,” she says, “when you first started helping me, you told me a trade was always better than a deal.  So if that’s all your part in this – not hurting me and keeping me safe and stopping when I ask – what’s my part?”

He straightens and stares at her in such surprise that she’s afraid she’s somehow offended him, or wrecked the promise she’d just made to trust him with how this new step in their friendship would work.  But instead of harsh words, when he answers, his tone is gentle.

“Your part,” he says, lifting her hands up over her head, stepping forward so that she steps backwards until there is the familiar sensation of being pinned between him and a stone wall, “is to enjoy yourself.”  He angles his head, and his mouth settles on the juncture of her neck and her shoulders; he presses an open-mouthed kiss there, and it ends with a soft scrape of teeth that makes her shudder with anticipation.  “To trust me.  To let me make you scream.”  His breath is hot in against her ear, and he pushes forward again, so that one strong leg is pressed between her thighs.  “To see how much pleasure you can take before you’ve had enough.”  His lips close around her earlobe, suck and then nip the flesh there until she’s trembling, until she needs the support of his thigh between hers to keep her from collapsing.  “To share your desires with me.  To let me take care of you.”  He pulls back from her, just enough to look her in the eyes.  “Understand?”

“Yes,” Herah says, on a whoosh of breath.

“Good,” Bull says simply, but there’s a smile in his voice.  He leans forward until his forehead is pressed against hers, their noses bumping together.  “Then we’ve got a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am attempting to strike a balance between using Bioware's original dialogue from the Inquisitor/Iron Bull romance and using original content. Obviously, if you recognize a line, it's directly from the game. However, I think that there must have been more to these conversations than we actually saw - that they occurred a little differently behind the game mechanics, if you will.


	13. Chapter 12

12

It changes everything and it changes nothing.

She eats in the tavern, with the Chargers, and Iron Bull’s eyes follow her just as intently as they ever have.  She practices with her trainers, and deals with Josephine’s political guests, and spends time with her friends remembering to be Herah instead of simply Inquisitor. 

And, occasionally, the Iron Bull will glance at her and tilt his head, giving her a little smirk that she’s quickly learned to recognize, and she’ll spend the night with him.  Sometimes he comes to her, and she’ll wake alone afterwards in the massive bed in her bedroom; sometimes he invites her to his room, a disheveled tower room close to the tavern, and she learns to grow comfortable waking besides him in his bed the next morning.

Herah learns to trust him more than she already does.  She grants him control when they are together: she grows used to letting him bind her hands or blindfold her eyes, to obeying his commands, to trusting him to see her safely to pleasure and the languid exhaustion afterwards that lets her sleep deeply.  The feel of his skin against hers becomes familiar.  She knows his touch, his grip, the weight of his body on hers, the small hum he makes when he is pleased, the low groan he gives when he finds his own release within her.

And outside of their time together, it seems, nothing has changed.  He follows her just as amiably as ever into the wider world when duty calls, and never once does he give any hint that he’s had her naked and screaming his name when they are out working with others.

They finally have an invitation to the Winter Palace, and they have six weeks to go before Herah will have to put on a dress uniform and enter the Game.  Because she doesn’t want to think about that, she throws herself into everything else that needs doing, and spends more time outside of Skyhold than safely within her fortress.

It’s the tail end of winter, dragging slowly into spring: the weather is awful and the roads are mires of mud and ice.  But there is always something to do, always something the Inquisitor alone can handle, and Herah pushes herself to clear as much as possible off of her plate before she goes to Halamshiral.  She avoids the frost and snow covering much of the world, and turns her steps towards the warmth of the desert, where the sun turns her skin a shade darker and the arid wind carries the smell of bleached bones and clean sand.

She kills an Abyssal dragon in the Western Approach.  Well, really, it’s a team effort – Cassandra and Iron Bull and Sera, and Herah has no idea who landed the killing blow in the chaos of the final moments of the battle.  The four of them stand around the dead dragon in something akin to awe, realizing their victory, and there is shouting and dancing and gleeful celebration from all of them – even Cassandra, as caught in the moment as any of them – once they are certain of their success.

They haul the dragon’s skull back to Skyhold, along with anything they think could be useful – skin and teeth and bones and blood, the remnants of half-a-dozen adventurer’s equipment lost to the beast’s fury – and celebrate their victory again with their friends in the warmth of the tavern.

Afterwards, though, as Herah is pleasantly tipsy and content, the Iron Bull flags her down from where he sits at the bar before she can leave to return to her room.  “Drink with me!” he enjoins her enthusiastically, and she can’t help but laugh: he’s already well on his way to drunk, still jubilant with victory.

She joins him, of course, and he shares truly awful Qunari brew as they toast the dragon, the desert, the fight, and about everything they can think of as the bottle’s contents drain lower and lower.  She enjoys herself: the warmth of the tavern, the slow burn of the alcohol, the way Iron Bull grins and throws his arms out expansively in his joy.  By the time the bottle’s empty, so is most of the tavern: Krem is coordinating the removal of three excessively drunk Chargers, and he catches Herah’s eye.

“You’re big enough,” the Tevinter lieutenant says, obviously exasperated by his charges.  “Can you get the Chief back up to his room for me?  I’ll owe you one.”

“I don’t need a –”  And the Iron Bull slides off his stool at the bar, only to take three staggering steps sideways to crash into a vertical beam running from the floor to the ceiling.  Herah is not sure if the whole tavern shudders as he hits it, but then she has had enough to drink that she’s not sure she trusts her own impressions of the event.  “Right,” he says, straightening himself slowly, squinting at the pole as though it’s offended him.  “Maybe I do.”

Herah giggles, and Krem’s glance is suddenly worried, as though he’s only realized that she too might be drunk.  She flutters a hand at Krem, past tipsy but not truly drowning in drink.  “I’ll drag him up,” she says, and she doesn’t slur her words but it takes effort.  And, because Krem is regrettably sober and she doesn’t think that’s fair, “And tomorrow night your drinks are on me.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Your Worship,” Krem sighs, and turns back to the drunkards he’s shepherding.

Herah, meanwhile, turns her attention back to Bull.  “I’m supposed to get you to your room,” she informs him, and her scar hurts as she smiles widely at him. 

“I heard that part,” he agrees, ginning back at her.  He reaches out for her, drags her up against him so that he can wrap an arm around her shoulders.  “Let’s see if we can manage this.”

The stairs are a challenge.  They cling to each other and to the railings for support, and it still takes them long minutes to make it up the three flights required to reach Bull’s room.  He is definitely drunk, but then she is not too far behind him; she only has the advantage because she had limited herself to just three cups of the Qunari stuff whereas he’d been going through it like it was water.

Still, she manages to haul him out of the tavern and into his tower room even though her own steps aren’t quite steady.  He sings something the whole way up – some tavern song they learned around a campfire in the Storm Coast from Lace Harding.  She doesn’t know all the words, but she’s fairly sure he’s missing about half of them, and he sings the second verse three times before she directs him through the door to his room.

He gives out a long, satisfied sigh as she steers him towards his bed.  “Ah, Adaar,” he says as she pushes his down onto the mattress.  “It was glorious.  Do you remember how she stretched out her neck and hissed and you stood right there and slammed your staff down and all the muscles in your stomach –”

She laughs, and because she’s got the warmth of alcohol leaving her limbs be loose and free, she allows herself to stand between his knees and take his horns in her hands.  “You were magnificent,” she tells him, and his smile stretches gleeful and proud at her words.  Her lips twitch: his almost innocent exuberance over fighting a dragon amuses her, and she presses a kiss right down in the middle of his forehead between his horns before she releases him.  “And you’re really drunk.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, and he slides back away from her to lie down on his bed.  She steps away, and helps lift his feet onto the mattress.  It takes effort to tug his boots off, mostly because she’s not yet familiar with how the brace on his weak ankle works, and she half-expects to find him asleep by the time she moves to the head of the bed to start tugging at the straps of his harness.  Instead, she finds him still awake, lying back and watching her with a half-lidded eye.  “Mm,” he sighs, and lets her unbuckle the first part of his shoulder harness.  “I see.  You just want to get me naked.”

She laughs again.  “Obviously,” she teases him.  Still, Herah pauses her fingers where they are working on another buckle, and instead braces her hands on his shoulders.  She leans down, and kisses a line along the very edge of the dark tattoos that wrap from his wrists to his chest; there’s a particular symbol branded onto his skin just above a wide shallow scar that cuts across his chest, and she chooses that spot to scrape her teeth across his skin and bite down.

He hums, and a hand lazily comes up to rest on her head.  She lifts her lips from his skin, and turns back to his harness even as his hand begins to stroke through her hair.  “You’re not naked,” he points out, tone utterly reasonable even as his words slur together.  “And you’ve got great tits, kadan.  You should come here and be naked with me.”

The Iron Bull, Herah thinks, is a happy and horny drunk.  She shouldn’t be surprised.  “Let me figure this out first,” she tells him, and he pets her hair with somewhat clumsy hands as she struggles with the buckles and straps that bind his harness to his chest.  It takes her longer than usual to strip it off him, mostly because he’s not helping and her fingers fumble and don’t work as quite as dexterously as she expects.

He is asleep, or nearly there, by the time she is done.  The room sways around her when she stands to put his harness down by his boots, and Herah knows she won’t be too far behind him.  So she gives up a half-formed plan to somehow remove his wide leather belt, and figures he can manage to sleep in his pants for the night.  She sets out a mug of water, and scrounges through the room until she finds a spare waterskin on a bookshelf in the corner, which she adds to the small table beside his bed.  She was a mercenary lieutenant long enough to know that’s what one does for drunk comrades.  And then she stands, swaying just a little, looking down at where the Iron Bull lies slightly snoring and stretched out on his bed.

It is a short walk from here to her room, and she really should take it. 

She doesn’t want to, but she’s never stayed the night with a man without sex being involved beforehand.  She doesn’t know how to, she realizes, or if she’s welcome without the sex, or what the morning would look like.  All she knows is that his bed looks comfortable, and she could fall asleep listening to him breathe.

She hesitates, and then turns to the door.  He doesn’t wake as she leaves.

The night air helps sober her up, and it keeps her awake as she hurries across the courtyard to the main hall and her room beyond it.  Someone has started a fire in her room, so she’s greeted with a lovely burst of warmth and the comforting glow of embers when she comes up the stairs.  She doesn’t bother undressing; she pulls her boots off, and tumbles into bed fast enough that the canopy above her swims unsteadily before she closes her eyes.  She’s asleep before she has the chance to pull the sheets over herself.

Half of Skyhold is hung over the next morning, and someone – probably Sera – has strung yellow and red ribbons all around the dragon skull where it sits in the lower bailey.  Herah has a mild headache and a fuzzy mouth, but she’s coherent enough to attend breakfast punctually and to join her advisors at the war table without more than the usual annoyance.

“I hear there was quite the celebration last night,” Leliana tells her with a smile.  “I wondered if we would even see you today.”

Cullen looks as though he too had enjoyed the evening’s decadence with dark rings under his eyes, but it is Josephine who lifts a graceful hand to her temple with a wince.  “Do speak quietly,” she begs Leliana.  “My poor head.”

Herah laughs, and is unsurprised when they call it quits shortly before the midday meal.

It’s a subdued day at Skyhold, and Herah enjoys it for the respite it is.  She makes the rounds, talking to the merchants who have set up shop near the stables and doing her best to chat with all the various people she encounters as she goes.  She is growing better at social small talk, and it is a small thing to ask how an acquaintance is feeling; it leaves goodwill in her wake and makes her feel like the Winter Palace might not eat her alive in mere weeks.

She checks in on her friends, too, though most of them are rather haggard and recovering from the previous evening still.  Vivienne, of course, appears perfect and expresses concern that Herah looks tired; Solas eyes her with poorly concealed amusement but solicitously offers her a brew which he claims will help clear her head.  They were the only two Herah doesn’t remember seeing at the tavern, but that hadn’t surprised her: wild raucous celebrations involving alcohol and tavern songs, she thinks wryly, don’t fit the personality of either mage.  She takes Solas’s offer, finds that it does help, a little, and sips it cautiously as she drifts through Skyhold looking in on her friends.

It is almost habit to save Bull and his Chargers for last.  She comes downstairs near evening, after spending almost an hour assuring Cole that his friends had deliberately poisoned themselves not to mask any hurts but because they were celebrating, and that doing so was in fact a normal social use of alcohol and nothing that needed to distress him.

Krem catches her first.  “You still buying me rounds tonight?” he asks sourly.  “Because Maker knows I need it after last night.  Next time you kill a dragon, Adaar, don’t tell anyone about it.  That was more drunkards than I want to deal with again in my lifetime.”

“Anything you want,” she assures him with a clap to his shoulder.  “Rough night?”

He grimaces.  “No one’s dead, though some probably wish they were,” he says, and the thought of their misery seems to cheer him.  “You’re lucky, Adaar – I’m not going to get myself _that_ drunk, not after watching those louts all night.  You got Chief up in bed all right?”

“Close enough,” Herah replies, trying not to think about all the innuendos Krem surely didn’t intend with that statement.  Instead, “How many of you does it normally take to drag him off?”

Krem barks out a laugh, and his face lightens.  “Three,” he admits.  “But normally, he doesn’t get that drunk.”

“It was a _celebration_ ,” Bull says from behind them, and Herah looks back at him with a smile.  He sounds testy, exasperated, and she’s sure Krem’s been ribbing him all day about how drunk he’d been the night before.  Still, his voice is fond when he speaks to them.  “Go get your drinks, Vint.  I’m sure Adaar won’t mind tucking you into bed tonight when you can’t walk straight.”

Krem snorts.  “Some of us have more sense than to drink that much,” he says, and heads for the bar.  “You’re losing your touch, Chief – got to get drunk these days to get girls to take you home?”

Bull calls out an affectionate insult to Krem’s back, which is returned by an obscene gesture, and Herah laughs.  “How’s your head, Bull?” she asks, taking the seat Krem vacated.

He sits down rather heavily besides her.  “Been better,” he admits.  He eyes her skeptically.  “You’re pretty cheerful yourself, boss.”

“I had less to drink than you did,” she reminds him. 

“Yeah.”  And, after a pause, he asks seriously, “Why didn’t you stay?”

“Stay?” she repeats, surprised.

“Last night.”  His voice is quiet, certainly, and no one is paying attention to them, but this is the first time he’s even referenced their arrangement in public, and Herah is so stunned by it that she’s nearly speechless.  He regards her for a moment, noting her surprise and ignoring it.  When he speaks, his words are carefully measured.  “You could have stayed.”

It takes her a long moment to figure out how to respond to that.  “I wasn’t sure if I should,” she finally settles on saying.

He looks away, and she looks down at the table.  Something uncomfortable stretches between them in the silence.  She isn’t used to that: their silences, for all they have sometimes held humming anticipation and tension, have always been honest.  This discomfort between them is new, and she doesn’t like it.  She feels compelled to say something, anything, to remove that awkwardness.  So Herah adds, quietly, “I didn’t want to leave.”

The Iron Bull huffs out a breath, and looks back at her with an expression she can’t read.  “Next time,” he says quietly, “stay.”


	14. Chapter 13

## 13

“So,” Krem says without preamble four days later, “do you know what’s wrong with the Chief?”

“Wrong?” Herah repeats incredulously.  “I haven’t noticed anything wrong with him.”

Krem rolls his eyes.  “There’s got to be _something_ wrong with him,” he says.  “I asked him and he says he’s fine, but honestly – he hasn’t hauled anyone up to his bed in weeks.  Something’s got to be wrong.”

She laughs before she can help herself.  “Because he’s not having sex?”

“Hey!”  And Krem’s grin is sheepish.  “For anyone else, yeah, sure, not a problem.  But for the Chief?  I mean, he’s not even wrestling with the stableboys anymore, much less flirting with that woman who makes the ale or kissing the girls who serve it.  It’s just all stopped.”  And he sounds completely perplexed.  “That’s not normal.”

“ _Everything’s_ stopped?” Herah clarifies, stunned.  “All of it?”

“All of it,” Krem agrees seriously.  “He even pushed aside Irinna – she’s that redhead with the great – ahem.”  He colors.  “Pushed her aside and didn’t kiss her at all, and the Chief’s not one to turn down a chance to, well…”

Herah turns to observe the Iron Bull where he is sitting, deeply entrenched in a chess game with Cullen on the other side of the courtyard.  “You’re right,” she says after a long moment, a deep yawning pit of terror opening somewhere in her stomach.  “Something’s got to be wrong.”

“Thank you,” Krem says with feeling, sounding vindicated.  “No one else was taking me seriously.  But I know the Chief – been around that big lug for years now, and this isn’t normal.”  He touches her arm, friendly, solid.  “I knew I liked you.  You get it.”

Her chest feels like it’s frozen.  Herah scrapes her breath together, turns to give Krem a grin that she doesn’t feel.  “Us mercenary lieutenants need to stick together,” she agrees, and the man returns her grin easily. 

“You’ll check in with him, then?  He just brushes me off.”

“Sure,” Herah agrees numbly, and her smile fades the instant she turns away from Krem.

What has she done?  _Nothing needs to change,_ she hears in his low rumbling voice, and she wonders uneasily why he’s stopped sleeping with others.  Is this her fault?  What has she done to force him to give up what is so clearly a part of him, an aspect of his personality and a hallmark of his self? 

It’s agonizing to wait for Iron Bull and Cullen to finish their game.  They play in silence, leaning over the board, moving pieces with surety and skill.  Herah can’t keep up with them, but she drifts closer as the game winds down.  It’s nearly another half-hour before Bull tips over his final piece; the two men shake hands and compliment each other on strategy, and then Cullen gives her a nod and a smile as he leaves.

“You have a minute to talk, Bull?” she asks, and she’s proud of how even her voice is.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, almost absently, still studying the board, moving a few pieces to recreate his loss. 

Her feet feel like lead as she moves to take Cullen’s seat across from him.  She means to dance around the issue, to practice some of the diplomacy Josephine has taught her in preparation for the Game, to prove that she can be polite and canny.

Instead, she blurts out, “Krem thinks something’s wrong with you because you’re not sleeping with anyone.”

Iron Bull chuckles without taking his eyes from the board.  He moves one of his pieces two squares back, studies the change.  “Shows what he knows, huh?”

There are better ways to ask, but she can’t think of any, so instead she decides to stick with blunt honesty.  “You’re not sleeping with anyone but me?”

He does look at her at that, his eyebrows raised in a question.  “Is that bad?”

“No – yes – I just…”  And she stares at him, genuinely baffled.  “What about everyone else?”

Bull laughs.  “What _about_ everyone else?” he returns.

Herah, bewildered, manages to say, “I mean, the serving girls, and the men that work in the stables, and the soldiers you used to pass time with…”

He shrugs, but doesn’t look away from her.  “Old news,” he says.  “Oh, don’t get me wrong – good times and good fun all around – but as long as we’re doing this –” and he gestures between them with a careless hand.  “- you’ve got my complete attention.”

“Me?” she can’t help but exclaim.  She feels dizzy, she’s so stunned.  “But – you don’t – I’m not…”  She trails off, stares at his amused face, and then repeats, “Me?”

“You.”  He leans back in his chair, at ease and completely at home. 

“But…”  Her nerves are back, her confusion, and she bites back her instinctive protest.

His eye gleams.  “It’s all right, Adaar,” he says, sounding amused.  “Go ahead and let it out.”

 _Fine_ , she thinks; _he asked for it_.  So she opens her mouth and blurts: “I can’t possibly be enough for you.”

He laughs at that, long and loud, so much so that others in the courtyard actually stop what they’re doing to look over and check on them.  Herah, face flaming, holds her ground and doesn’t move from her chair; she crosses her arms and glares at the Iron Bull until he all but collapses back in his own seat, still chuckling weakly.  “Ah, kadan,” he manages.  “You let me be the judge of that.” 

“You said,” and she has to swallow, take a deep breath, “that this didn’t have to change anything.”

“Doesn’t have to,” he agrees easily.  “But that doesn’t mean things can’t shift around a little, if we’re fine with the changes.”

She stares at him, still perplexed, though her panic is subsiding.  “And you’re fine with just me?”

 Iron Bull laughs.  “You worry too much,” he tells her.  And, perhaps seeing her unconvinced, he adds, “Really.  I’m doing just fine with what we’ve got going on.  It’s not a change I mind, Adaar.  It works for me.  You need someone to take care of you, and I can do that.”

She shakes her head, bewildered.  “Taken care of?” she asks, feeling as though the conversation has escaped her.  She clarifies: “Why do I need to be taken care of?”

Iron Bull tilts his head, and the sun glints dully off his horns.  “You remember what I said to you a long time ago – about how in the Qun, it’s not the smartest or the most popular people who get made our leaders?  Our leaders are the ones who can make the tough decisions and live with it.”

“I remember,” Herah agrees cautiously.

“You can make the tough decisions,” he tells her somberly, “and you can live with them.  But that’s a lot of weight to carry.  And just because you _can_ carry it – and you are – that doesn’t mean you should have to carry it all the time.  You need to be able to set that down every now and then, let someone else carry you for a while, take care of you.  You need someone to hold on to so you can get your strength back, so you can go back to holding the weight of the world again on your own.  That’s what you need, and that’s what I can give you.”

She looks at him in astonishment, watches the afternoon sun play across his face, and takes the time to actually process his words.  She wonders at how she’s never thought of what they share in that light before.  “A safe place,” she murmurs, understanding dawning.  “So I don’t have to be Inquisitor all the time.”

The Iron Bull’s smile is almost proud.  “Exactly,” he says.  “I can give you that: a time where you don’t have to be anyone but yourself.”

She stares at him, seeing his scarred face in a new light, and is suddenly intensely grateful for his thoughtfulness.  “How long have you been taking care of me, Bull?”

He smirks.  “Longer than you’ve let me,” he admits, utterly relaxed despite her new scrutiny.

Her smile stretches in response, scar twinging and ignored, but her mind is already skipping ahead and circling back on their earlier conversation.  “If that’s what I need,” Herah asks, “then what about you?  What do you need?”  She rolls her shoulders, tries to let the tension drain from them.  “If you’re just sleeping with me, then I should be taking care of you, too.”

He actually laughs at that, and his arms come up to cross in front of him.  “I’m good, Adaar,” he tells her.  “I’m better than good.”  He laughs again, but for the first time in their whole conversation, he sounds awkward when he speaks, his good cheer forced and almost false.  “You don’t need to worry about me.”

She doesn’t like hearing that hollow cheer from him.  “Bull,” she chides, and he seems to realize that he’s worrying her.

“You don’t need to trouble yourself on that,” he tells her, uncrossing his arms and settling back into his chair, the picture of relaxation even as she can hear some undercurrent of tension she can’t identify in his voice.  “I’m doing just fine.  This is working out for me.”

“But what _is_ this?” Herah asks in something near despair, feeling out of her depth. She’s worried and frustrated enough that she doesn’t bother to check her voice, and as the words emerge she winces, wondering who is eavesdropping and what they must think.

Iron Bull just shrugs, unconcerned.  “It’s up to you, Adaar,” he says.  “We’re friends, and we’re lovers.  We can keep this light and casual, just how it’s been – that’s fine with me.”  His grin is wickedly satisfied.  “You haven’t seemed to mind it, at least.”

“No,” she agrees, and her smile back is weak but honest.  “I haven’t.  I just – I just don’t know what I’m doing, Bull.  I’m sorry.”

“Hey.”  His voice is soft, soothing.  “Neither do I, you know.  Qunari don’t have sex with friends.  I’m as new at this as you are.” 

“It isn’t just sex,” she says quietly, voice firm.  “You take care of me, Bull.  I appreciate that.  I just wish I knew how to show it.”

“Hey, you’re doing just fine, Adaar,” he tells her, and she can hear the affection in his voice, the honesty.  It brushes her worries away, so that for the first time since their conversation started, she finally feels her shoulders relax.  “Even with the Qunari, that’s a hard thing to show.  We’ve got that old tradition about the dragon’s tooth, and that’s really about it.  So we’re both just taking this as it goes.  There’s nothing to apologize for.”

“Dragon’s tooth?”  She shakes her head.  “I haven’t heard that one.”

“It’s an old tradition between friends to show that you cared,” he says, and his eye goes distant, recalling the details.  “You find a dragon’s tooth, break it in half, and each of you wear a piece.  Then, no matter how far apart life takes you, you’re always together.”  He snorts out a laugh.  “Friend of mine had one once, from a buddy in Seheron – we always insisted it wasn’t really a dragon’s tooth, just some big-ass snowfleur tooth bleached the right color.  Pissed him off.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she says drily, and the Iron Bull laughs.

“Yeah,” he says, and looks at her with a measuring eye.  “So what has you so worried, Adaar?  We’ve been doing this thing together for a while now, and you’ve never been so twitchy about it before.  You’ve been off since that celebration about the dragon.  This isn’t like you.”

She opens her mouth for a quick, flippant reply, and then decides he deserves the truth.  She takes a breath.  “Am I a chore?” she asks him quietly.

“A chore?”  And he looks taken aback, almost offended.  The look he gives her is withering.  “Where would you get that idea?”

“You never kiss me,” she says in a rush.  And then, almost instantly, she snaps her mouth shut in embarrassment. 

She expects laughter, or a joke, or some lighthearted tease about how he _has_ kissed her, just not on her mouth.  Instead, as she shuts her eyes in mortification, she hears nothing but silence, and that is in every way worse than she could have imagined.

She’s in the middle of a fairly impressive mental tirade against herself – curse words in several languages are involved, all calling herself an idiot – when she hears him shift and stand.  There are two steps as he moves to her side, and then he speaks.  His words are low and firm, and obviously an order.

“Come with me.”

She opens her eyes fearfully, and finds him standing before her, face a blank mask and narrowed eye focused on her.  Something tingles straight through her, a shiver that is both dread and anticipation, and she finds herself on her feet before she’d given herself conscious permission to stand.  He turns to go, and she follows him.

They walk in silence, out of the courtyard garden back into the main bailey, and he strides past the practice ring without so much as a glance towards where Krem is drilling his new recruits.  Herah keeps pace with him, though it stretches her legs to do so, and she follows him to the edge of the bailey.  There are few people there, all focused on their own tasks, and no one notices – she thinks – when he abruptly stops by the wall and all but drags her behind the back of the tavern so that they’re shielded from the bustle of Skyhold by a tangle of small trees.

“What-” she begins, and then his mouth comes down on hers and she’s left speechless.

He kisses her like he does everything else: fiercely and completely.  His lips are hard and demanding on hers, and his hands wrap around her back to pull her close as he ravages her mouth.  Herah moans, the noise surprising her, and she presses herself up against him, desperately trying to keep up with his lips on hers and feeling somehow as though she can’t.

It is long minutes before they pull away from each other; Herah can feel her pulse throb in her lips, a little point of pain where her scar is pricking from being so intently pressed against Bull’s mouth.  She stares up at him in dazed wonder.

The Iron Bull chuckles, and leans forward to rest his forehead against hers.  “Was that all?” he asks, warm and amused.

“I just – I thought –”  And she hauls in a breath of air, still stunned.  “Qunari don’t kiss friends, but I’m not Qunari and you were.  I didn’t think it mattered – I didn’t think I’d care – and by the time I realized I did, I didn’t know how to bring it up.  I didn’t know if you wanted –”

“I did.”  And his hands have snuck up her front to caress her breasts; she gasps and arches into his touch.  “I do.”  He kisses her again, working at her with teeth and tongue and lips and hands on her skin until she’s practically draped around him like a vine.  “And I didn’t know,” he tells her, “if you wanted this, too.”  His expression is serious, even as he nips at her lower lip.  “There’s sex, but that’s only one type of intimacy.  This is another, and it’s different, and I didn’t know how much of it you wanted.”  He lifts his head to look her in the eyes.  “I assume,” he drawls out, a smirk on his mouth, “that you want this.”

“Yes,” Herah gasps out, and all but climbs him to drag his mouth down on hers again.  “Yes.”

He’s grinning when he kisses her again, and they stay behind the tavern together until sun is dipping dangerously low in the sky.

“Herah Adaar,” he says, as she does her best to straighten her clothes and comb fingers through her tousled hair when he finally releases her.  Her name always sounds different when he says it, pronounced as it would be in Qunlat and not with the broader and more common accent she’s used to.  She looks up at him – there’s a little bruise from her mouth just on the place where his neck meets his shoulder, and she knows he’s likely left the same evidence of their encounter together on her own skin.  But instead of a fear of discovery, all she thinks is _I did that_ when she looks at his bruise, and a fierce jolt of satisfaction burns through her. 

He smiles at her.  “This thing that we have going on,” he says casually, as though he hasn’t just spent the better part of an hour kissing her senseless.  “Just so you know: I like it.”

She laughs, heart light again.  “Me, too,” she says, and they dare to leave their hiding spot together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General Notes:
> 
> 1\. I hope you guys didn't think I'd left out the kissing by accident. :) It was quite deliberate, as you can now see.
> 
> 2\. This was one of my favorite conversations in the game, and I'm disappointed it was both so short and not an actual cut-scene. So I expanded it a bit.
> 
> 3\. I'm currently working my way through writing the Trespasser parts of the story. Current best guess is around 24 chapters long; most are in editing at the moment.
> 
> 4\. I have lots of thoughts about this chapter posted [on my tumblr ](http://veritysays.tumblr.com/post/150058016567/on-chapter-13-of-shifts) so that I don't blab forever here. Shoot me a comment or ask or whatnot if you have thoughts as well!


	15. Chapter 14

## 14

There are six dragon’s teeth left in in the forge when she drops in to casually check on how many remain, and she takes them all before she has time to doubt herself.

It takes time to split a tooth to her satisfaction – she ruins three of them before she is able to break one cleanly, and even then she doesn’t manage a perfectly even split.  Bull’s half, she decides, will be the larger one, and she tells herself that the difference in size between the halves was deliberate. 

Dagna, of all people, helps her with it; she bribes the dwarf by offering her the exact set of antaam-saar she wore into the Fade at Adamant.  Dagna is so delighted that she asks no questions and produces an exquisite silverite setting for the tooth’s base, complete with a sturdy leather strip she can use to string the tooth on as a necklace.

She spends time on the tooth every night for almost three weeks, carefully carving out the center to finish the design.  It’s a way to distract herself from Halamshiral, she knows, but more, she wants it to be done right.  Her hands are steady when she holds the tools, her fingers sure and her movements certain, but still it takes time.

When it is done, she holds it in her hand and peers at it, seeking flaws to correct or rough spots to trim.  She doesn’t find any, which is terrifying: it means the tooth necklace is done, insomuch as it ever can be, and thus the next step is to actually give it to Iron Bull.

She is not a coward.

It still takes her four days before she can manage the task, and she’s so nervous about it that she’s more than willing to be distracted by Bull when he clearly has other ideas about what they could be doing together.  He seems to know that she’s struggling with something; he kisses her like she’s precious, ties her to his bed, and proceeds to lavish attention on her until she’s limp and trembling, all but begging for him to fill her.

He’s just as wrecked as she is afterwards, which is a comfort.  As she gulps in breaths of air and waits for her heartrate to even out, she rests her head on his chest, careful of her horns, and enjoys the way he runs his fingers through her hair.  It feels natural to lie naked with him in his bed, unashamed of her body and at home with his touch.  Herah is grateful – so grateful – that they can share this, that Kosrin’s betrayal is a dim memory compared to the reality of the Iron Bull’s careful attention after sex.  He checks her wrists and ankles, where the ties bound her to bed, and he makes a pleased noise low in his throat when he kisses them and finds them free of harsh markings that would have indicated the ties had been cinched too tight.

“That was nice,” he tells her as he moves away from her to stretch out on the bed.  He looks back at her with a real smile, affection in his eye, and she likes that he’s still breathing hard.  She likes that he so obviously enjoys bedding her – he is so insistent on her pleasure that sometimes she needs the reminder that he too is affected by their time together.  “Real nice.”

“It was,” she agrees, and leans over him to kiss him.  “You take good care of me, you know.”

“I try,” he says, and watches her fondly as she stands to find her clothes.  “It’s good like this, you know?  No Inquisition, no responsibilities.  Nothing outside this room.”  His voice is soft, and she smiles as she dresses, letting the rhythm of it sink into her skin and lull her into contentment.  “Nothing but you and me.”  He waits as she adjusts her antaam-saar, gestures to a spot that she needs to tighten, and finally nods his approval.  Completely relaxed, totally naked, he smiles up at her.  “So what was bothering you, anyway?”

The tooth is tucked away in the pocket of her loose pants.  She feels for it with her hand, knows her heart rate has picked up, and sits down on the bed beside him.  “I was thinking,” she starts, and the door opens.

It’s a comedy of errors, she’ll think later.  Once the mortification fades, once she can look at it objectively, Herah can be glad that she at least was already dressed, that the Iron Bull has no shame, that his good mood lasted as long as it did through what seemed an endless parade of humiliating guests.

As it is, she is intensely humiliated to have no less than three of her closest and most valued friends walk in on what is clearly the aftermath of sex.  Cullen is awkward, apologetic and polite and struggling not to laugh at the absurdity of it all; Josephine is stunned into nonsensical commentary that Herah would laugh at were she not so embarrassed; and Cassandra, of course, is matter-of-fact and completely practical.

“There’s nothing wrong with a… a momentary diversion,” she says, her lips twitching in the attempt to contain her smile, and Herah finally regains her senses.

“It’s not momentary,” she snaps decisively, somehow standing, and Cullen just barely manages not to chuckle; Herah realizes the innuendo too late, and glares at her commander for making her aware of it.  “And it’s not a diversion.  It’s –”  And a hundred thoughts flit through her head, all in the span of an instant.  What _is_ this that they share, and why is she forced to define it now, in front of Bull, before she has had the chance to offer him a dragon’s tooth and see if he even wants to accept it? 

She shakes her head, driving those doubts away, and speaks firmly, as Inquisitor.  “The Iron Bull and I intend to continue what we have,” she says authoritatively.  “Is that a problem?”

“Of course not,” Cullen is quick to assure her, looking anywhere but past her at where the Iron Bull lies naked on the bed. 

Josephine echoes his words, still reduced to one-syllable answers, but it is Cassandra who earns Herah’s gratitude.  “A surprise, I’ll admit,” the Seeker says, and then she inclines her head.  “But not a problem.  We should take our leave.”

Cullen agrees with her, rather more quickly than usual, and Herah is fairly sure that Cassandra has to physically clamp a hand down on Josephine’s arm to lead her from the room.  The sound of the door shutting behind them is the most welcome noise Herah has heard in all of her life.

 Her knees give out, and she thumps back down onto the bed wondering if she’s still breathing.

The mattress creaks, and Iron Bull shifts to sit beside her.  “Are you all right?” he asks quietly.

She takes a deep breath, and shuts her eyes.  Mortification washes out of her with her exhale, and is replaced with simple relief: so, their secret is out, and the world hasn’t ended.  It’s a comforting thought.  “Yes,” she says, and opens her eyes to look at her lover.  “I’m all right.”

The look he gives her is indescribable – pride and admiration and amusement and something new – and it grants her courage.  “I have something for you,” she says before she loses her nerve, and pulls the dragon’s tooth from her pocket.

“What’s that?” he asks curiously as she unwraps the leather strip attached to the silverite setting.

She takes a breath, and holds it in her hands.  Then she offers it to him.  “Half a dragon’s tooth,” she says, quickly, before she can lose her nerve.  “So even when we’re apart, we can be together.”

She has not seen the Iron Bull speechless before, and she savors the moment even as her nerves stretch taut and expectant, waiting for his reaction.

He reaches out carefully, and touches the tooth with a broad fingertip.  He’s silent for a long moment, tracing the filigree Dagna had added, running his fingers carefully across the carving Herah had spent so long perfecting.  It’s small against his fingers, and he seems almost hesitant to take it, as though his clumsy touch might harm it.  Her hands are trembling faintly when he finally gently takes it from her.

“It’s not often people surprise me,” he murmurs, still looking at the necklace, and he strokes the tooth where it lies in cradled in the palm of his hand.  “This – this is a good surprise.”

Her breath leaves her in a whoosh.  “Oh,” she says, relief leaving her dizzy.  “Good.”

He looks up at her, and the smile he gives her is not one she’s seen from him before.  “This is good,” he repeats, and adds, “Kadan.”

He’s called her that before, she thinks, and dares to repeat it back to him.  “Kadan?” she asks.

He leans forward, and kisses her forehead.  “Kadan,” he agrees, as though he’s conferring a title.  “It’s a word for someone you care about, someone you respect.”  The hand not holding the dragon’s tooth comes up, and touches the center of her chest.  “For here.  For the space that holds your heart.”

Her own heart swells, and she lets him pull her back down to the bed with all her worries eased.  He kisses her gently, like she’s something fragile and precious, and she sighs against his mouth and wiggles closer to him.

“Where is the other half of the tooth?” he asks her after long moments of tender lips and slow touches.

“In my room,” she admits, curled into his chest and content to have his arms anchored around her.  “I haven’t touched it yet.  I spent all the time on yours.”

He touches her shoulder.  “Bring it to me,” he says quietly.  “I’ll carve it for you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were paying attention, Iron Bull has indeed called her kadan twice already by accident: once while he was very drunk in Chapter 12 and once during their conversation in Chapter 13.  The drunken slip-up happens in-game if you time that conversation right. I really liked that during my playthrough, so I expanded on it here and made him a little less cautious with his words a second time for purposes of this fic.
> 
> I have also changed dialogue slightly with how he translated kadan in this scene, mostly because – like most Qunlat words – there are several meanings, and at this point, this translation is the one I think Iron Bull would offer her.  Don’t worry, eventually this shall come into play again with the translation Bull gives in-game at this point (“My heart”). 


	16. Chapter 15

## 15

She wears her half of a tooth on a necklace to Halamshiral, tucked carefully under her clothes where the tooth is smooth against her skin.  It’s just small enough for her to hide it in the valley between of her breasts, a perk Iron Bull had definitely appreciated when she’d first draped the necklace across her skin.  The slight pinch of flesh against the tooth is occasionally startling, but it never truly hurts: a tiny sting, she thinks, like the way the scar on her lip hurts when she smiles.  In both cases, she considers the minor pain worth the reminder of happiness it brings.

The necklace keeps her grounded as she does her best to play the Game.  She wants to scream at the pretty words and poisoned conversations that are part and parcel of court life: she is not built for this, for politics and politeness and innuendos.  She is built for iron and steel, blood and battle, war and fire – she is built for direct confrontation and fights where magic can singe her fingers and soul with strength and purity.

But she is Inquisitor, and the world rides on her shoulders.  So she dons that iron collar and bears the weight of Orlais with it: the necklace of dragon’s tooth she wears beneath that collar only strengthens her shoulders and makes bearing that yoke easier.  The tooth nips her as she settles the fate of Orlais and battles a Grand Duchess in the gardens; it pinches against her skin as blood spills and the Game boils politics down to death and fire.  The iron collar of Inquisitor allows her to face royalty as though she were equal to that august status: as though it was her right to make demands and speak bluntly to those who were raised as her betters. 

Still, as she turns away from the dancing and gossip of the ballroom, the aftermath of the victory and peace she’s won, it is the tooth pressed against her skin that reminds her she is more than simply the Inquisitor.

The Iron Bull finds her on a balcony afterwards, when everything is over but the celebrating.  “Hey, kadan,” he greets her, sauntering with lazy strides to stand beside her where she leans on the railing.  “How are you doing?”

Herah considers the question as she looks out over the sleeping gardens.  The air is cool, but she can only feel it on her hands and face.  The rest of her skin is enveloped in a uniform she didn’t choose and doesn’t like.  “I hate shirts,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Me too,” he agrees with her instantly.  His smile is wry, even if his voice is serious.  “They’re awkward and uncomfortable.  These at least have buttons.”

He gestures at the gleaming gold buttons running up the side of her uniform, and she sighs.  “I couldn’t get it on otherwise,” she admits.  “Josephine had to have the tailors redesign the uniform due to the fact that the Inquisitor has horns.” 

“Hm,” he says, and reaches a finger out to trace the line of buttons down her side.  “You know, the obvious solution is for you to just not wear a shirt.”  His smile is small and pleased, wicked even though his tone is light.  “I could get behind that.”

She laughs despite herself.  She’s exhausted and sore; she’s dealt with royalty and treason all evening; she has gone from being openly mocked to openly admired.  There are scorch marks on the marble and blood spilled on the grass, and she’s responsible for both.

She looks at him: in the red uniform shirt, Bull looms larger than ever, his muscles and bulk covered but by no means hidden.  Like her, she thinks, he wears the outfit well for all his distaste for it.  He looks ill-contained by the human clothing adapted for his larger frame, and she misses the ability to touch his chest and feel his warm skin beneath her fingertips.  He isn’t himself in a shirt, no more than she is, and the fabric seems like masks between them.

“I never wear shirts,” is all she says, though, clinging tight to the normal conversation they’re having to distract herself from everything she’ll need to think about later.  “I hate them.  As soon as my horns grew in, I stopped wearing them.”

“I’ve noticed,” the Iron Bull agrees, his tone amused.  “Antaam-saar does good things for you, kadan.  I can’t say I mind.”

She laughs again, but it’s hollow and she can hear how tired she sounds in the noise.  So she brings her hands up to scrub at her face, trying to refocus back on politics and the fate of the world.

Bull watches her with something like sympathy traced across his features.  He opens his mouth to speak, but there’s a commotion behind them that draws both of their attention back towards the ballroom – cheers and a quick change to the music, shouts for more drinks and drunken toasts.  When he looks back at her, though, the sympathy is gone and his lips are twisted up into a grin.  “Your choice, kadan,” he says.  “We can hide out here, and I’ll keep all the idiots from bothering you.  Or if you want, we can head back inside, find some drinks, and hit the dance floor.”

She wants to laugh again, but she’s just too tired.  “I didn’t think you could actually dance,” she points out, because she knows that she’d been forced through lessons under Leliana’s baleful eyes – Blackwall had been a good sport, a surprisingly graceful and experienced partner, and Herah thinks of the silken swish of Florianne’s skirts against her boot-tops and is grateful for the lessons all over again – but she hadn’t thought Bull would want to get within a league of a ballroom.

“Ha!” he says.  “I let Viv teach me.  She thinks,” he adds with a wink of his good eye, “that she’s got me wrapped around her little finger.”  And he steps back, large and solid in the moonlight, and holds out his arms as though he has a partner.  He executes a perfect six-step rhythm in time to the strains of music dimly heard from the ballroom, and then offers her his hand.  “What do you say?”

Herah only realizes she’s smiling when her scar pricks against her lips.  “We’ll be a show,” she warns Bull, but she steps forward to take his hand. 

She loves his chuckle, how it rolls low and deep through her bones.  Iron Bull tucks her hand against the crook of his arm as though she were a noble and he her escort.  “They already got the show,” he reminds her with a lewd waggle of his eyebrows.  “This is just confirmation.”  And he pauses, looks down on her.  “You’re all right with that?”

Herah doesn’t need to even consider the question.  “Yes,” she says, and wraps her hand more securely around Bull’s arm.  She doesn’t like the cloth of his shirt there, separating her fingers from the warmth of his skin.  “Let them talk.”

She leaves the Winter Palace with Orlais balanced in her palm and with courtiers fawning over her every whim.  All of her goals have been met, and all of her advisors are – if not best pleased – satisfied with the various outcomes of the event.  Invitations flow in to Skyhold, political and otherwise, and the Inquisition has become a political force able to stand proud before empires and kingdoms without flinching.

If there is gossip about how the Inquisitor has a Qunari lover, Herah ignores it with her chin held high and her face a mask of polite challenge, daring anyone to say a word of disapproval.  There is talk – there must be; there always is – but the Inquisition does not lack for allies because of it.

She hates politics, she thinks, and what’s worse is that she’s apparently decent at the Game.  So now she has no real excuse beyond personal distaste to avoid the delicate verbal battles which decide the fate of nations.

After her third closed-door meeting with Josephine and Leliana, she breaks free of the documents and paperwork and lineages and goes to Cullen.

“What needs to be done outside of Skyhold?” she demands.

Cullen – currently her favorite advisor for the way his eyes are sympathetic – instantly hands her two different reports.  “You’ve your choice, Inquisitor – Emprise du Lion or the Hissing Wastes.”  And he actually grins at her, open and honest, one soldier to another, as he turns away.  “I’d suggest the Hissing Wastes.  They’re not so Orlesian.”

She takes his advice, and flits throughout Skyhold making preparations and informing her companions of her plans before Josephine or Leliana can contradict them.  She wants – rather desperately – to take the Iron Bull with her.  He could help her work out her frustrations with the world.  She could lay her troubles down at his feet, and he could work over her naked body until she felt nothing but need and pleasure.

But Herah is Inquisitor, and Herah is fair, and no matter how much she might want to drag him out of Skyhold with her, she can’t take him along every time.  Besides, the Chargers are being sent back to Adamant, to raze the keep to the ground, and he’s at least as needed there as he is by Herah’s side.

He grimaces when she tells him that she’s leaving him behind so that he can go to Adamant with his company, but he’s already nodding before she can finish her explanation of why.  “A good plan,” he says when she falls silent, and he gives her a faint, apologetic smirk.  “We’ll just test out those necklaces a little earlier than we thought, kadan,” he says, tapping the dragon’s tooth where it lies on her breastbone. 

That makes her smile even though she doesn’t want to.  “I suppose so,” she says.

He wears his dragon’s tooth every day, and so she wears hers as well.  His is larger, though, and more obvious on his bare chest; she likes seeing it there, worn proudly and prominently, and so she traces a finger down the leather strap it hangs on to touch the tooth itself.  “Well,” she says then.  “We’re leaving tonight.  I’d better let you get back to your Chargers.”

His Chargers are in the practice ring behind him, ranged in a loose half-circle against a squad of Cullen’s former Templars; the Templars are bracing behind their shields, slowly advancing, and the Chargers are defending their small corner of the ring against the assault.  Behind them, sitting rather lopsided in the dirt and sawdust of the practice ring, is one of Krem’s hand-sewn dolls with a jaunty blue scarf tied around it; the point of the exercise, of course, is to keep the scarf out of the hands of Cullen’s soldiers.  Herah rather suspects that the doll itself is somehow a trap – a ward from Dalish, maybe, or sitting on a surprise from Sapper – but hasn’t the heart to ruin the surprise by warning Cullen’s troops.

Bull, though, just glances back at his Chargers and their ever-tightening knot of defense against the encroaching shields.  “Oh, they’re doing just fine,” he drawls, and looks down at her with a gleam of lust in his eye.  “I think I can spare some time to send you off in style.”

She leaves Skyhold six hours later with a very prominent bruise on her left wrist – he’d been very apologetic – and a trio of love-bites on the soft flesh of her upper right shoulder which Blackwall eyes with some concern.

“If he hurts you,” he begins one night days later when they share the midnight watch, “you just let me know, and I’ll take the son of a bitch down for you.  Might have to do it when he’s sleeping, but I can manage it if you need me to.”

She’s not so much disturbed by the notion as she is oddly touched that Blackwall wants to protect her.  “He doesn’t,” she says, and gives him a smile.  “Not unless I ask him to.”

Blackwall’s lips press together, and at first she thinks she’s offended him, but then his blank mask cracks, and he lets loose a snort of a laugh.  “Good for you,” he says then, and he meets her eyes honestly over the fire.  “You’re happy then?”

Herah answers honestly.  “Yes.”

“Then I’ll not say a word about it,” he vows, and keeps to his promise.

Sera, of course, is not so circumspect.  “It’s crazy, innit?” she asks as they ride through the endless expanse of the desert.  “I mean, how do you _walk_ after?”

Herah does her best to ignore her, though occasionally her ramblings will make her cheeks flush and sometimes she has to shut her up before her speculation becomes truly outrageous.

Dorian says nothing about it at all until they’re only a day away from returning to Skyhold.  “You actually miss the big brute, don’t you?” he marvels as they check the straps on their mounts.  “Hm.  I suppose it takes all kinds.”

But he winks as he turns away from her, and makes a big fuss so that Sera will acquiesce to a longer day’s ride so that they reach Skyhold some four hours earlier the next day.

Everyone, it seems, has comments for her. 

“Do make sure he appreciates you properly, darling,” Vivienne says to her one evening out of nowhere.  “Men so rarely understand what treasures they have.  And do be sure to treat him well in return, my dear: he really is an excellent man, even as unpolished as he is.”

Cullen congratulates her, wishes her happiness, and then offers an invitation for her to join them when he and Bull play chess.  “Mostly for my own sake, honestly,” he admits as they walk the ramparts by his office.  His grin is easy and amused.  “He’s getting better, and I need him distracted.”

Leliana very delicately wishes her well and informs her that the Chargers have signed another quarterly contract.  Solas laughs when he finds out, a knowing chuckle that makes Herah like him more for his easy acceptance and humorous acknowledgement with no trace of judgement.  Josephine apologizes for interrupting them with her cheeks stained red and her eyes flitting from side to side in embarrassment, and then almost instantly her words tumble over each other to ask if she’s happy.  The question means as much as the apology, and Herah accepts both as signs of Josephine’s fondness for her.

Cassandra publicly rolls her eyes at the whole matter and smacks a soldier’s head when he dares make a lewd comment about it in front of her; then, in private after two glasses of wine, she wistfully asks how their relationship started, and Herah feels somehow ashamed of the fact that she has to tell the warrior that no, it isn’t some epic romance, merely something shared between friends.  After that, Cassandra eyes them somewhat unhappily, a furrow between her eyes, and watches them as they sit together or share their time – but it isn’t a judgmental stare, only a puzzled one, and Herah can live with that.

Varric, of course, demands the details.  “For the book,” he tells her, and hounds them both good-naturedly with bribes and wicked speculation so that they both laugh.

Cole, on the other hand, understands it all too perfectly, and has no problem blurting out some of the most emotionally and physically raw moments of her life out loud to whatever audience happens to be present.  It takes time to convince him that tactfulness is, perhaps, the called-for approach in these matters, and Herah still sometimes flushes when he earnestly repeats things best left in privacy.

Krem, of all people, is the only one who is silent on the matter, for so long that Herah eventually gives in to curiosity one evening to ask him about it.

“It’s not a problem, is it?” she asks tentatively as they share a meal together in the tavern.  “Me and Bull?”

Krem snorts.  “He’s happy, you’re happy – why should it matter to me what you two do in the dark?” 

“You’re the only one who hasn’t said anything about it.”

“Why would I?”  And he gives her a small smile.  “You’re both happy, aren’t you?  So I’m fine with it.” 

Herah leans back in her chair, not sure why she’s surprised.  “Really?”

“Sure.”  Krem shrugs, clicks his tankard against hers.  “I hope it works out for you two.  Besides,” he adds with a grin, “I like you.  Maybe if it works out, after all of this, you’ll sign on with the Chargers and I’ll have someone with some sense to help me keep everyone in line.”

She laughs, because it’s expected of her and because his idea does amuse her, but late that night, when her hips are murmuring a quiet and satisfied protest of how wide Bull had tied her legs apart some hours earlier, Herah absently flexes her muscles to better feel the slight sting of overuse and wonders what her future might hold.

And, for the first time, she doesn’t hesitate to include Iron Bull in those imaginings.  Would he stay, she wonders, if her fate is to be tied to the Inquisition even after Corypheus is defeated?  Or at least, would he come back to her between the contracts the Chargers will surely continue to take?  She touches the tooth at her neck, comforted by the sharp edge of it.

And if the Inquisition serves its purpose and then cuts her loose, she wonders, what then?  She holds her hand up above her in bed, watches the light of the Anchor fret and flicker in her palm. 

She can’t go back to the Valo-kas, she thinks, not now that she’s commanded armies and nations.  She can’t return to Shokrakar as an obedient sergeant, wrestling pig-headed mercenaries into some semblance of order in between battles and contracts.  It isn’t that she wouldn’t be willing – Herah still sometimes longs for the simplicity of the life she left behind – but that she knows she would no longer fit into her old life.  How could she?  She wears new titles now, as carefully and easily as breathing; no one who knew her before can understand how much those titles have changed her.  It’s a difference she won’t be able to bridge, she thinks, even with those who she’d counted as friends before.

Besides, she thinks, scar stretching as her smile grows, she can’t imagine Iron Bull’s reaction to the Valo-kas.  He’d be right at home in some ways, she thinks, and a fish out of water in others.  And he’d completely overwhelm the delicate balance the Valo-kas have struck between Tal-Vashoth and Vashoth alike.

If not the Valo-kas, then where?  Someplace away from politics, she decides; someplace away from the dance of nations and the weight of the world.  Perhaps she could convince him to help her start her own mercenary company – and when did that daunting task become seen as manageable?  She snorts, lets the light of the Anchor play over her fingers as she touches them to her palm.  Perhaps Krem was right: she could join the Chargers, people who already know her as Adaar and Inquisitor, people who understand who she is with the weight of those titles imprinted into her skin.  Besides, the Chargers have the advantage of already belonging to Bull: she’d at least not have to worry about how to include him in her life if she went that route.

A larger hand reaches up to take hers.  Bull links his fingers with hers, covering the light of the Anchor, and pulls their entwined hands back down between them on the bed.  “Still awake,” he observes quietly.  “Need to talk?”

“Just thinking,” she reassures him.

“Good thoughts?”

She likes knowing that whatever she decides to do, she wants him there for it.

“Good thoughts,” she says, and smiles.


	17. Chapter 16

## 16 

There is a sense that the end is coming.

Herah can’t escape the feeling.  The fine downy hair on the back of her neck stands up, as it does when she stands too close to Dorian when he calls down lightning.  She catches herself glancing out of windows, as though she expects the sky to open and demons to pour from the heavens.  She rocks on the balls of her feet when she stands, ready to dodge a blow or step forward in an attack.  She eats quickly, afraid of interruptions, and her sleep comes in snatched and haphazard moments.

All of Skyhold feels tense.  Soldiers leave daily, in units and troops bound for the Arbor Wilds.  Scouts slink through the gates, coming and going: they travel in smaller groups than the soldiers do, and move with the sinuous grace of solitary predators.  Armored men and women stand together in tight clumps, waiting, watching, at the ready.  The whole keep breathes in anticipation and urgency, and only Cullen’s tight commands keep everything moving smoothly.

The politicians – allies and ambassadors and noble guests of goodwill – pour out of Skyhold like a wave of finely-dressed rats fleeing a sinking ship.  Merchants stop bringing in new wares, and slowly begin to close up their shops in the lower bailey.  A caravan of children and the injured leaves, attended closely by some of Cullen’s best reserves and a judiciously chosen group of caretakers: there’s a village somewhere in Ferelden which has offered to take them in, to provide a safe haven away from the danger of retaliation.  The servants gather to watch them leave, pressing little loaves of bread and cookies and other sweet treats into the hands of the children; there are four small rocking horses in the shape of griffons, handmade and carefully painted, packed into the wagons with them when they go.  Parents kiss small faces goodbye and make promises they might never be able to keep. 

There are tears and brave faces on both sides, but there’s a sense of relief when the small caravan is no longer visible past the edge of the valley: with the innocent safely out of danger – as much as they ever can be in a world gone mad – the whole of Skyhold and the might of the Inquisition turn undistracted towards the grim reality of war.

There are soldiers on the battlements now, and fewer pilgrims filtering into the valley below.  Skyhold is fortified, a fortress high on a mountain, and yet has never before felt so much like a stronghold of war as it does now that only those with purpose remain.

It’s not that Herah minds the difference – she always was more comfortable with direct action than indirect preparation.  But she just wishes the end wouldn’t take so long to arrive.  She is not good with waiting.

Still, she does not shirk her duty.  She goes to the gates to watch her soldiers leave: they might die for her, and the least she can do is see them off personally.  She stands at the war table and reads every report handed her.  She hones her skill against training dummies, and checks and double-checks her gear.  She will be among the last to leave for the Arbor Wilds, and so she has the longest to wait.

Not all of her companions are handling the delay well.  Sera is jittery, nervous and unhappy with it.  She is all too happy to take the excuse of joining the advance scouts as a reason to bolt out of Skyhold’s walls towards action six days early.  Herah sends Blackwall and Dorian with her.  Blackwall – Thom, though Herah isn’t yet used to that name – is steady enough to keep her from doing anything stupid, resigned to danger with the kind of acceptance only guilt can bring, and Dorian is flippant enough and observant enough to keep both of them in check.

She sends Cassandra out with Vivienne and Cole two days later; they are the best of her companions at understanding the Game, and all their allies are marching to meet them in the Wilds.  Cole can see what is unsaid and what is veiled behind barbed words; Cassandra, at least, will take his warnings at face value, and few will dare contradict her.  And Vivienne can hold her own against any noble in Orlais – generals and army officers and the personal guards that keep royalty safe will stand no chance arguing with her.

Morrigan goes with them, for reasons of her own; Herah doesn’t quite trust her but can’t bring herself to quite dislike her, either.  Her arrogance is off-putting, but there’s no denying she’s useful.

Herah keeps Solas behind with her for his expertise on ancient elves, his skill with ice magic, and his prompt attention to barriers and healing spells.  She asks Varric to accompany her because she needs how steady he is in the face of changing circumstances, because he laughs where others cower, and because he distrusts Morrigan at least as much as she does.

She would like to say that she keeps the Iron Bull behind simply because she wants him at her side, but he’s too useful to reduce to a trite cliché.  He is part of her personal group for the Arbor Wilds because he steadies her, yes, but because he is a force of nature when he fights as well.  He can stand alone with his axe against their enemies as the others rain ice and fire and arrows from afar without worry for being the only one in the thick of things.  He understands how to make room for Herah in the melee when she steps forward with a magical blade glowing in her hands, and how to cover her retreat when she scrambles back for distance once more.

So there are practical reasons, at least, to keep him at her side for what might be the end of the world; the fact that she finds his presence a comfort is almost an afterthought, though a welcome one.

The Chargers are sent out a day ahead of them, a forward guard for the Inquisitor’s party.  Herah grips Krem’s arm and wishes him luck; Krem nods professionally at her, exchanges a few brief words with Iron Bull, and leads the Chargers out for the long march to the Wilds.

She watches them from the ramparts, a small column of soldiers following the road through the valley.  The road had resembled a roaring river mere days ago, filled with the movements of troops and supplies.  Now it is little more than a trickle – there are only perhaps sixty soldiers in the Chargers, and comparing them against the masses they follow only emphasizes their small size.

The Iron Bull comes to find her after dinner, and by wordless agreement they walk through Skyhold together towards the top of the highest tower.  From the balcony in her bedroom they can stand and see further than any other point: the Chargers are already out of sight in the dimming early-summer sunset.  There are campfires being lit – checkpoints and watch stations along the path – and tomorrow, when Herah sets out with her chosen companions, she will make good time.  There will be resupply stations ready for her, with hot meals and fresh mounts; the roads will be clear of enemies and casual travelers, and her soldiers will be an unseen escort all around her.  She will reach the Arbor Wilds swiftly, easily, and in decent comfort.

By her calculations – which Josephine’s logistics confirm – Herah will be in the Arbor Wilds ready to press the attack against the might of her enemy in just under six days.

“This is probably the last time we’ll see a real bed for a long while,” she tells Iron Bull as they step back into her room from the balcony.  She gives him an inviting smile.  “Want to take advantage of it?”

He is quick to do so, and very thorough in his attentions.  She’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and it is relieving to be able to lay that burden down at his feet and not think about the future.  He ties her to the bed with practiced, competent hands, and wraps a thick cloth over her eyes so that she can’t see what he will do to her. 

He undresses her slowly, unwinding her ataam-saar from her bound limbs.  She squirms under his fingertips and gasps under his hands; he works at her until she’s struggling at her bonds, thrashing against them in real effort.  He barely speaks the whole time: she does not know what he will do until he does it, and the waiting – the expectation and anticipation and the pounding eager dread of what comes next – drives her wild.

What began gentle becomes rougher, and his touch firms on her skin.  He does not hurt her maliciously, and no touch of his is designed to be wholly painful.  But he leaves marks on her all the same: bruises sucked onto tender flesh, fingers pressed into her soft curves, the scrape of teeth against muscles, the sting of fingernails dug hard against her body.  It reminds her, oddly enough, of smiling, where there is the brief burn of pain as her scar pulls tight, but once the sting passes all that is left is the smile.  The pain Bull sometimes inflicts is like that – brief, the precursor to something better, worth it for the feeling that follows.

Herah sobs in her bindings, wrung out and quaking.  Her skin tingles, every inch of it, and she craves more even though she is so overly sensitive from his attentions that she whimpers whenever he touches her.  _Katoh_ hums behind her lips, a mental chorus of safety that makes everything bearable as she trembles and cries out, amazed he can force her body to such an agonizing realm of bliss.

 _Katoh,_ she thinks, dazed; _katoh,_ her mind rehearses, ready to beg for mercy if he misreads her and pushes her too far.  But her lips shape his name instead, both a plea and a benediction, and she repeats his name over and over again with gasping, broken breaths as he relentlessly sees to her pleasure.

She loses track of time: of how long she’s been tied, of how many times he’s pushed her over the edge, of how many days until the end.  Only when her legs won’t stop trembling does he pause and start to soothe her exhausted and sweat-slicked skin.  He pulls the blindfold from her, and lets her catch her breath.  He strokes one large hand up and down her taut stomach until she’s no longer panting, and then Bull carefully unties her.  Her limbs fall like leaden weights to the bed once they are freed, and Herah can do little more than remain where she lies and recover.

He gives her a long moment bends his head to kiss her.  “Kadan,” he whispers against her lips, crawling over her.  He’s gentle when he slips inside her, at least at first: he’s slow and thorough and her body purrs beneath his, exhausted and drained and yet somehow still rousing again beneath him, greedily reaching for what more he can give her.

She wraps her arms around him, and when her fingers score down his back, he shuts his eye.  His head falls back on a groan, and when he inhales a sharp breath and opens his eye again, he focuses on her face. 

Bull isn’t gentle after that; he chases his own pleasure in her, and all Herah can do is clutch him and do her exhausted best to keep up.  Her last orgasm is slow to build, and slides over her like a warm and final tide when he loses his rhythm above her and stutters to his own finish at last.

He pulls her with him when he rolls over afterwards, collapsing onto his side so that he doesn’t crush her.  Instead, she lies in his arms, cradled there as they both attempt to recover, and Herah counts her racing pulse as it settles.

What does he see, she wonders, when he blindfolds her and ties her down and focuses on wringing every ounce of pleasure he can from her body?  What does he get out of it, lavishing such attention on her?  How does he know when she’s pushed too far, or when he can be just that slightest bit rougher with her?  How can he be so generous, to care for her and put his own needs aside for so long?

She’d worry about him, or feel as though she were somehow taking advantage of his good-natured interest, if he wasn’t so clearly wrecked and gratified by it beside her.

He huffs out a sigh, gusty and satisfied.  “Damn,” Bull says, and his laugh is brief, more a grunt that anything.  “That was…”  And he pets at her hair, her face, with hands that somehow feel clumsy.  “That was good, kadan.”

“Mm,” she agrees, and nuzzles her nose for a moment against his skin.  She likes hearing his voice in these moments, when he is spent and satiated and there’s that buzz of contented lust in his tone.  “It was.  I think I needed that.”

His chuckle is low and content.  “My pleasure,” he drawls, and then he laughs.  “Well, maybe some of it’s your pleasure.”

“As if there was ever any doubt,” she laughs back, and she squeals as he rolls them both over.  He is a brief weight on her, and then he keeps moving, rolling off of her and coming to his feet in a graceful slide off of the bed. 

“Let me clean you up,” he says simply. 

So Herah lies back in bed and waits as he goes for the wash basin on the stand by the fireplace.  He sees to her with tender, careful movements, and in the end, when he’s done, she watches him replace the wash basin with half-lidded eyes.

He turns to notice her observing him.  “Like what you see, kadan?” he teases gently, at home with his nakedness as he comes back to the bed.  He sits down at the foot of it, looking up at her affectionately.

“Always,” she affirms with a smile, and he rewards her for that with a quiet smile of his own.

He wraps a hand around her ankle, careful to avoid where the rope earlier had bound her.  Pressure from the rope has left a faint red stain on her tanned skin; it will fade, they both know from experience, without leaving a bruise.  Still, his fingers are soft when he touches her, wanting the contact but ever concerned with her comfort.  “All this time,” he muses thoughtfully, “and you’ve never said katoh.  If I’d have known you’d handle it this well, I’d have let you pick your own watch word.”

Herah’s grin is wry.  “You’ve come close,” she admits, and thinking about it makes her skin rise into gooseflesh. 

He runs a hand up her leg, soothing the prickled flesh there.  “Good to know,” he says with another smile.  Then he reaches up, and surprising her, takes her hand.  “I’m a better man for having met you, kadan,” he tells her somberly.  “I hope I’ve managed to make things a little easier on your end.”

He isn’t often serious with her like this – not in bed, at least, and his words bring back the reality the morning will bring.

She sits up, wraps both of her hands around his.  “You have,” she confirms.  “I’m not sure I could have gotten through all of this without you.”

That makes his smile spread, softer and somehow pleased, and his obvious pride at being useful grants her the courage to continue talking, to say what she’s wanted to tell him since it became clear that she’d have to face Corypheus’s army in the Wilds.

“You’ve made it bearable,” she tells him, “and no matter what happens, if we don’t make it out of this –”

“Katoh,” Iron Bull says instantly, voice sharp and hard, and Herah is shocked into silence halfway through her thanks.  She stares up at him in astonishment.

His face is tight and unhappy.  “Stop,” he says, voice ragged, and he reaches for her.  She lets him gather her close, until she is draped across his thighs and pulled tight against his chest, and he bends his head down so that his lips press into her hair. 

“Bull?” she asks hesitantly.

His voice, when he speaks, is quiet.  “I can’t,” he says on a sigh, and the kiss he places on the crown of her head is soft. 

She looks up at him, curious, wondering if he’s all right, and something in her expression seems to give him purpose.  The unhappiness she sees in his eye clears, and his jaw firms.  His arms around her loosen, but one hand comes up to take her jaw between his fingers.  “We’re going to come out of this alive,” he orders her.  “Together.”

She doesn’t have a chance to respond before he kisses her, but there’s no good response to that in any case.  She can’t promise alive, she thinks, as much as she wants to; so instead she kisses him and marvels that he fears for her.

“Bull,” she says, when their lips part.  She brushes a finger across the scar on his lip – she likes it best of his scars, because when they kiss it presses against the scar she carries on her own mouth.  “Bull,” she says again, looking up at him, trying to make him understand how much this – he – has meant to her.  “Thank you.”

He stares at her, still serious, and then he shakes his head, smile wry and fond and familiar.  He pulls her down onto the bed with him, and wraps his arms around her to drag her close against his body.  “Kadan,” is all he says in response, but it is enough.

He kisses her again the next morning as they stand at the bottom of her stairs, ready to go out into the bustle of the rest of Skyhold and begin their journey to the Arbor Wilds.  She kisses him back, fiercely: her hands grip his back and his hands are tight at her waist, and pulling apart from him feels somehow like saying farewell.

“Time to save the world,” she tells him as they stand together by the door.

“If anyone can,” he says seriously, bending to press his forehead against hers, “it’s you, kadan.”  Then, reluctantly, he releases her and takes a step back.  His smile teases at his lips, but doesn’t reach his eye.  “I’ve got a good reward planned for you for afterwards, too,” he teases her, though his voice is tight and not as mirthful as his words would imply.  “So let’s get going.  The faster this whole mess is over, the faster I can get you naked again.”

She wants to laugh, but it’s caught in her throat.  “There’s incentive,” she manages.  “I’ll hold you to that.”

Iron Bull’s gaze is suddenly direct and focuses.  “Good,” he says, and then, surprising her, he adds, “Please.”

 _Please live_ , she hears in that request, and she has to look away to hide how touched she is.

“I will,” she says, though she can’t promise that, and reaches for the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In-game, this conversation comes with the option to for the Inquisitor to confess love for the Iron Bull, or even to tease him about marriage.  I didn’t choose either option in my play-through, mostly because in my head neither was appropriate for the way their relationship was developing.  I was very pleased with the option I did get for my Herah.  I thought it suited them both – and this odd, shifting relationship they have – very well.  It’s a little too early for either of them to declare anything at this point, when neither of them are ready to define further what they have even to themselves.


	18. Chapter 17

## 17 

When the end comes, it’s almost a relief.

The sky opens, and green light flares down from the heavens.  The earth shudders in response, and boulders and trees and whole mountains quiver and rise into the burning sky at the whim of an ancient madman who would be a god.

Herah doesn’t stop to think.  She holds her staff in sure, strong hands, and storms forward.  Behind her, men and women she didn’t know two years earlier fan out in a deadly march of friends and comrades.  Behind them are her scouts, her armies, all of her people who are not still posted in the Arbor Wilds: people who have chosen to fight and potentially die in her service, because they believe that she can lead the world to something better.

It isn’t the end she expected.  She’d been afraid of strange, ancient magics – of dead gods come to life, of power she could never hope to understand, of blighted magic and legendary evil.  She’d been frightened of Corypheus, of the ancient magister who had blackened the Golden City.  She’d worried that in the end it would come down to belief, to ancient power, to the whim of gods she didn’t follow.

Instead, it all comes down to a fight against a powerful, desperately crazed mage, and Herah is built for battle.

She barrels forward, calling fire down to wreathe her enemies in flame.  Her sword flickers in and out of being, the hilt warm in her hand and the power behind it solid and tame to her will.  Her staff spins; her magic calls.  The air smells of blood and smoke.

There is a dragon, but she has fought dragons.  Having a dragon fighting at her back is new, of course, but Herah can adapt to it.  When the false archdemon crashes from the sky, denied the freedom and power of the air, she doesn’t even need to shout commands to her companions. 

They have fought dragons before.  Iron Bull steps past her with his axe light in his hands; Blackwall follows him with his shield lowered and at the ready; Varric circles to the left while she goes right.  They have fought dragons _together_ before, time and again, and the only difference is that this time they do not stop to celebrate afterwards. 

They push on, climbing the twisting and broken paths even as the remains of the Temple rise higher into the sky.  The air is cold when they corner Corypheus, and Herah slams her staff down onto the broken tiles and unleashes an inferno.  Her blood all but sings in her veins, as though she wore the most potent of vitaar.  She was born for this, she thinks savagely as her sword flares to life in her hand and she strikes a hard blow.  She was born for battle and conflict and the heat of war, and if Corypheus thought to best her here, he is gravely mistaken.  It is his final error, and she revels in it as she swings her staff and sets the world alight.

She almost pities him, in the end, when he is defeated and broken and calling on a long-abandoned god.  But her anger is hot and her blood is fierce, and she destroys him with vengeance and certainty.

She doesn’t remember the next moments clearly.  A broken orb, and Solas looking as though his world cracked with it.  A falling Temple, and a harsh crash back down to sundered earth.  A burst of green light from the sky, a searing pain in her palm, and then a sort of numbness as both fall deafeningly silent.  An army – a people – gathering before her, looking up to her with hope and awe and reverence yet again.  A strange sense of peace and calmness as she looks down upon everyone and realizes that everything she’s struggled for has been accomplished. 

Bull prods her, gently, to action.  “Look at you,” he says, leaning on his axe.  He’s exhausted and weary, but there’s pride in his face when he looks up the steps at her.  “All alive and everything.”

She laughs, a short burst of air that is half laugh, half huff of breath.  It wakes her up, so that she realizes her hands are cramped on her staff and her back aches from a tumble across rocks and her legs have climbed more stairs than she thought possible in a day. 

Her laughter, broken as it is, shatters the tension of the people before her, and there is a sort of collective sigh.  There’s nervous laughter, stunned rejoicing, half-choked sobs, groans and moans of pain, the stuttering prayers of the faithful – all in a burst of noise and movement, as people realize they live and others don’t, that their feet and their hands and their hearts hurt, but that they’ve reached the end of their journey alive.

“What do we do now?” someone asks, and the question hushes the group.

One by one, heads turn towards Herah: friends and strangers alike, soldiers and scouts and volunteers driven only by the strength of their own convictions.  Herah looks out over them, and pride nestles next to her heart: these are hers, she thinks, and they are victorious.

“We go home,” she says, and thinks of Skyhold.

Skyhold is turned out to welcome them.  The courtyard is packed full of pilgrims and visitors, and the servants are beaming in pride, holding hands and singing and smiling to light the world.  There’s a narrow lane kept clear for them, so that those who fought Corypheus and won can enter the crowded stronghold with room to move, and Herah looks ahead to the steps where she was made Inquisitor and knows she isn’t done with her duties yet.

There is a celebration, because Josephine can work miracles.  There are tables in the courtyards and gardens.  The tavern overflows, and no one cares; the great hall bustles with guests and visitors and the uninvited hoping for just a glimpse of the throne and the Inquisitor who has claimed the right to sit upon it.  There is food and drink and laughter, and Herah never wants it to end.  This, she thinks, _this_ is what they fought for: joy and relief and good times.

“You’ll need to make a speech,” Josephine tells her, her cheeks pink with delight.  “And put out a declaration, and send out heralds…  But tomorrow, of course.  Or the day after.  Tonight is…”  And she sighs, her worries and fears vanishing so that when she looks at Herah, eyes shining, she looks young and dazzled.  “Tonight is marvelous.”

Herah is swamped with affection for her, and stays with her to sample all the small tarts that are pressed into her hands.  She moves through the room on a wave of happiness, congratulating her friends and playing nice with the dignitaries present for her victory.

When it is so late that it is early, Herah surveys the great hall with satisfaction.  Food has been left where it lies, which means the servants are celebrating their victory as well without being forced into the mundane realities of chores and duties.  People huddle together in sparse groupings: most have sought out their beds or the still-rowdy tavern to continue the party, and those that are left are tipsy and occasionally break into spontaneous song.  Her friends have trickled out, one by one, for more drink in the tavern or for the recovery of sleep, and Herah sways on tired feet and considers everything to be near perfect.

“You’re tired,” a low voice says in her ear, and she jolts in surprise because yes, she is exhausted enough that she hadn’t even noticed the Iron Bull step behind her.  “Come with me.”

So Herah follows him, willingly, out of the public great hall and into the privacy of her room.  He turns on her almost as soon as the door shuts behind them, a gentle and insistent assault that leaves her laughing and almost breathless as he kisses and teases her the whole way up the stairs to her bedroom.

Once they are standing before her bed, though, he simply sighs contentedly and wraps his arms around her, so that she’s drawn up against his body and cradled as though she were something precious.  She laughs, and rests her head against him, careful of her curving horns against his chest.  “What’s this for?” Herah asks, taking the opportunity to nuzzle into his shoulder.

“Because we’re both alive, and you’re mine,” he tells her, with no small amount of satisfaction.  “Out there, out with everyone else – you’re the Inquisitor.  You belong to the Inquisition, and that’s good – they need a leader like you, someone to celebrate, someone to look up to.  But in here,” and he lowers his head, kisses the top of her head between her horns.  “In here,” he repeats, “you’re all _mine_ , and you’re alive, and I’m so damn proud of you, kadan.”

Herah feels warmth bloom in her chest, a kind of happiness that outweighs her exhaustion.  “Yeah?” she asks him, rubbing her cheek against his skin.

Bull huffs out an amused breath, and pulls her away from him so that he can look her in the eye.  “You,” he says, utterly serious, “are an amazing, beautiful, strong woman, one who has saved the world.  And I am unbelievably proud of you.”  Then his grin appears, and he bends his head down.  “And since you’re all mine,” he tells the skin of her neck, lips pressed against her pulse, “I am going to show you just how attractive I find that.”

Herah is exhausted and tipsy, riding an emotional high and stunningly relieved to be alive.  He is just as tired as she is, and likely even more sore – there had been a dragon, after all, and he’s never been shy about getting into the thick of things.  So it is not their most energetic bout of sex, and they are both too tired for it to be the most athletic. 

But there’s a connection between them, as he moves inside her and she kisses him, arms and limbs wrapped around him like living vines.  And afterwards, when they lie naked and tangled together in her bed, watching the sun as it rises over the mountains outside her window, that new connection doesn’t vanish.  Herah reaches up to his chest and toys with the dragon’s tooth necklace he doesn’t remove, even for sex, and feels his fingers idly brushing across the skin of her stomach.

This is home, she thinks: the home she wanted to return to after saving the world.  More than simply being a place, Skyhold is this security for her – a room where she can shut out the rest of the world, where she and Bull can simply be together.

She’s not done with the Inquisition yet, she knows, and that realization is not a burden but a relief.

She sighs, and wiggles across the bed until she can drape herself across her lover.  Bull’s hands help her settle, and when she at last finds a comfortable position and rests her head carefully against his chest, he lets his own arms rest loose and easy around her.

“Nothing like home after a long fight,” he sighs, in the tone of voice she’s learned to recognize means he’s heading towards sleep.

It’s so close to what she’s been thinking that she smiles even though he can’t see her face.  “Together,” she agrees.

He hums, satisfied, as the first rays of a new dawn’s light peek through the bedroom windows.  “Aren’t you glad you decided to trust me, back when I first joined up?” he murmurs wickedly, pinching her side gently.

Herah’s smile curves higher.  “You just wanted to get me naked,” she teases him quietly.

The Iron Bull laughs at that, a short low chuckle that makes his stomach and the arm she has draped across it bounce.  “There was that,” he admits.  He takes a long, slow breath, and then another, and another, so many that Herah assumes he’s drifted off to sleep.

Then, very quietly, Bull says, “I’m glad we’re together, kadan.  You make me happy.”

Herah’s heart swells, and she hears again _I am so damn proud of you_.  “You make me happy,” she manages to say in return for him, and that’s somehow not enough, could never be enough for all he means to her, but she doesn’t have the words to explain it any better than that simple statement.

His arms tighten around her, and his sigh is one of pure contentment.  “Good,” he says simply, and there is no more talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like that in-game Bull explicitly tells the Inquisitor that he's proud of them. I think that's a really sweet and important moment, and it really struck me as very well done. Not all love interests do that; I thought it was a very revealing comment and I was surprised at how sweet and supportive I found it.
> 
> Also:
> 
> Future chapters will contain spoilers for Trespasser, as Herah and the Iron Bull move through the next few years. The spoilers are mostly character related rather than plot related, but if you don't know the final fate of the Inquisition or of the Anchor, be ye warned.


	19. Chapter 18

18

It is very strange to realize that she has settled into normalcy.

They are no longer desperately trying to avoid the end of the world.  Corypheus and the threat he represented are gone, and though there are still Venatori and Red Templars and the usual if more mundane threats to home and happiness, there is no longer the weight of all of Thedas resting on her shoulders.

Bandit kings and corrupt slavers and even the machinations of empires seem somehow almost child’s play compared to Corypheus’s corrupted might.  Mere mortal pettiness is nothing contrasted against an ancient Tevinter darkspawn magister with pretensions of godhood.

There are still concerns, of course.  Skyhold is still a fortress, and the war table is still in use.  Josephine coordinates political invitations and thinly-veiled demands; Leliana has eyes in every corner of the world and stealthy fingers in every pie; Cullen trains troops not for war against the Breach but for war against men.  For all peace beckons, the threat of chaos still looms.  The Inquisition – though changed – still stands.

Herah is glad to grow used to routine. 

She notices the difference most at the war table.  It is a marvel to spend her time at the war table in quiet, deliberate discussion rather than frantic worry.  It is still novel to meet there merely once a day, for a few short hours.  They are not interrupted by weary scouts bearing urgent requests for aid and ill tidings of Corypheus’s latest plans.  Excursions are planned and executed in orderly fashion, without the last-minute adjustments that forever marked their struggle against the Elder One.

The lines of worry smooth from Cullen’s forehead, and his laughter comes easier, a kind of quiet wry chuckle that Herah likes hearing.  Josephine is lighter, more daring with her comments and more sure of where she stands, and her smile is swift and her eyes bright.  Leliana still stands aloof more often than not, but she smiles again, that small private smirk that means she’s enjoying her Game once more. 

Herah smiles back at all of them, grateful for their support.  She liked them when the weight of the world was on their shoulders; it’s a pleasure to discover that even without that enforced and required partnership, they are still good company.  They discuss plans and official business and in the same breath comment on the weather and the gossip from the kitchens.  They leave the war table with their shoulders unbowed and their minds still fresh, which is a welcome change.

The Inquisition feels certain now, strong and solid.  They are a force tested and proven, and they’ve emerged respected and feared by those who would have mocked and dismissed them prior to their victory.  Herah stands proudly at the head of it, comfortable with her place there: she is Inquisitor, and the Inquisition is hers. 

But for the first time, she thinks, she holds that position by true merit.  Oh, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t earned her title before – but she thinks that her advisors had been given little choice in the matter.  She bore the Anchor, and with it the only hope to seal the Breach and stop Corypheus; there was really no other option but to elevate her to a position where she had the chance to use that power properly.

Now the Anchor still sparks in her palm, but the Breach is sealed.  She leads the Inquisition not out of necessity but out of right: she has earned the place they gave her.  They could have swept her aside, she knows.  They could have retired her with full honors and promoted someone more politically advantageous to take her place, now that her Anchor is no longer necessary.  Failing that, she could have retired herself: she could have gracefully returned the burden of leadership that she’s borne for so long.  She could have stepped out of the spotlight and out of history, fading into nothing but rumors and legends just as the last Inquisitor had done so many ages ago.

Instead, no one so much as murmurs a word about replacing her, and Herah finds that she has no real urge to step aside.  An ex-mercenary Vashoth mage still stands at the head of one of the most powerful organizations in Thedas.  Herah is Inquisitor because they have accepted her as such.  She has saved the world and built the Inquisition into something powerful; they have no compunctions about leaving the group in her hands.

Trust, Herah thinks, and faith.  She wonders when the prospect of being in charge of so much stopped frightening her; she wonders when taking charge of such an organization became something as natural to her as breathing.

That isn’t to say that victory has made them complacent, or that their success means that they have no more challenges to face.  There are still problems to solve, still nights where they stand around the war table until long after dinner has gone cold.  Herah still dislikes sending out spies to dangerous assignments, and there are still times when she wishes she was nothing more than a simple mercenary, someone who didn’t have to make hard decisions and deal with the politics of nations.  But she will not give up her duties, for all she sometimes fantasizes about simpler times; she is the Inquisitor, and the Inquisition is hers.

And there is no denying that things have improved with the defeat of Corypheus.  Slowly, step by step, Skyhold settles down into the routine of peace.  Sentries stand guard, true, and there is a certain wariness that never quite leaves the eyes of those who survived Haven.  But there is more laughter, now, and songs that float through the night air from more than just a solitary bard in the tavern.

Herah likes the difference, even as the change separates her from those she’d grown to consider friends.  Oh, everyone stays at the beginning, for as long as they can manage – but the Breach brought them together, and with the Breach sealed, parting is inevitable.

Cassandra leaves first.  She doesn’t have much choice in it, after all; the Chantry has waited long enough, and they are eager to install her as Divine.  Varric goes in her wake, teasing her mercilessly; he will continue to the sea and then across it to Kirkwall from Val Royeaux, and Herah suspects that he’ll be sorrier to say farewell to Cassandra than he lets on.  The Seeker and the dwarf have an odd, strained friendship, as antagonistic as it is solid, but they are good for each other, and they’ve leaned on that friendship to get through the past few years.  As much as both will deny it, Herah thinks they’ll miss arguing.

Blackwall leaves too, and Sera goes with him: he’s trying to right the wrongs of his past, and Sera thinks he’s being stupid and will get himself killed, so she’s decided to tag along to keep him at least aware of his folly.  Herah doesn’t think it will last – Blackwall can handle himself, so Sera will grow bored and find something better to do before long – but they leave in good spirits, and Blackwall won’t mind being abandoned when Sera finds another cause somewhere else.  She’s sorry to see them go, but cheered at the thought that they’ll be in each other’s company for a while.  Besides, she thinks, perhaps the time apart will help her grow used to thinking of him as Thom Rainier instead of as Blackwall.

Losing Dorian is a wrench, if only because of everyone, he seems the sorriest to leave her behind.  She worries for him in a way she doesn’t worry over the others: he is returning home to face his fears and to struggle against the current for change, and she wishes fiercely that she could do more to help than simply write him awkward letters.

Vivienne returns to Orlais, drifting away with polite ease and affectionate farewells and clipped reminders about half-a-dozen likely political allies.  She sends missives regularly, her dry wit all but dripping from the scented pages, and Herah is oddly touched by the small gifts the Enchanter sends her at random intervals: books, perfume, fancy candles – the little fripperies of Orlais sent to the harsh fortress of Skyhold to cheer her day.

Cole doesn’t so much leave as he fades away.  He is still present – she can tell only from the odd comments she overhears sometimes – but he is remembering more and more who he is.  Compassion makes Skyhold a pleasant place, and he seems happy enough when she sees him, but sometimes Herah remembers Varric’s impassioned hope for a more human Cole, and she wonders if she has done the right thing in encouraging him to return to his original nature.

Solas, of course, left before everyone else, before they’d even returned from the Temple of Sacred Ashes for the last time.  Herah can’t help but feel somehow betrayed.  She isn’t sure what she expected from him, so she isn’t sure if she’s disappointed: but of all the options, she never expected outright abandonment, which is what his absence feels like.  Sometimes she stops in the rotunda to look at the last unfinished section of his fresco, and wonders if he had known that he would not be returning to finish it.  It’s comforting, somehow, to believe that he thought he would be coming back, even if that raises more questions than answers.

Bull and his Chargers, though – they stay.

It isn’t that they’re always at Skyhold.  The Chargers are, after all, still contracted with the Inquisition, and there are any number of uses for a small mercenary band even with Corypheus defeated.  Sometimes, in her insecure moments when she’s questioning everything, Herah wonders fearfully if they only stay because they’re being paid to stay.  Then she goes to watch them practice, to listen to them bicker in the tavern, and her worry fades away.

Leliana, of all people, had been the one to very delicately be sure she knew that the Iron Bull was staying of his own accord.  “We’ve signed another contract with the Chargers,” she’d mentioned one evening as they were leaving the war table together, a few steps behind Cullen and Josephine.  “Tell me: is it customary for a mercenary captain to include his own rate separately from his company?”

Herah had shrugged.  “If they’re pulling extra duties, yes,” she'd said, and for the first time in months, she remembered one of the reasons the Chargers were originally hired.  “Is Bull still listed as my personal guard?  That could be why he’s separate.”

“Oh, no,” Leliana had assured her with a small, contained smile.  “He hasn’t signed any personal contract with us in almost a year – I just wanted to make sure the omission was intentional.”

Herah is decent at numbers, and it’s easy to realize that almost a year prior, she had given Bull a dragon’s tooth.  She confronts him on it the next chance she has.

“You’re not being paid anymore,” she says when she finds him up in the small room he uses as his personal retreat.  “Why?”

He’s sitting at the half-broken desk he’s never cared enough about to fix, and at her statement, he gives her a mildly annoyed look.  “We’re being paid,” he disagrees, gesturing at a stack of mission recaps and invoices teetering precariously at the edge of the desk.  “And we’re being paid well.”

“The Chargers are being paid,” she clarifies.  She half-sits, half-leans on the desk, glancing almost absently at the reports that litter it.  “The Iron Bull is not.  Why not?”  And, as he opens his mouth, she adds, “And don’t tell me it’s because you won’t accept payment because you’re sleeping with me.  I’ve heard enough about some of your prior jobs to know that shouldn’t make a difference.  You’ve never had a problem sleeping with your employers before.”

He’s unoffended.  “Krem talks too much,” he says with a grin, tossing the document he’d been studying down carelessly.  “Besides, it’s not like that was precisely a common occurrence, anyway.”

“Oh good,” she teases right back.  “Because I’d hate to think you only seduced me out of habit.”  And, as he grins at her, she says more seriously, “This is your livelihood, Bull.  I don’t want you to sell yourself short because of me.”

Iron Bull considers her for a moment, head tilted to the side so that the weight of his horns stretches the muscles in his neck.  “It’s mostly not that,” he says after a moment’s thought, cracking the bones in his neck and then stretching the opposite way to do the same stretch on his other side.  “I mean, look, I trust the Inquisition.  You aren’t going to send the Chargers into anything stupid – at least, not without being upfront about it.  But when it comes down to it, if the Inquisition’s paying me, I’ve got to do what the Inquisition wants.”  He pauses just long enough for Herah to open her mouth in response, but not long enough for her to get a word in edgewise.  “I’m not here for the Inquisition, even though it’s good pay and a good cause.  I’m here for you.”

“That’s not the same thing?” she asks, though she knows it’s not.

“No,” he says seriously, leaning back in his chair.  “It’s not.”  He regards her for a long moment, and then the edges of his eyes crinkle with humor.  “Besides,” he adds, “this way you can’t fire me.”

She laughs despite the serious turn the conversation has taken.  “And that’s a worry, is it?”

“Not particularly,” Bull tells her flippantly.  “But hey.  You never know.”

This is unfamiliar territory, more precarious than she expected.  “Bull,” she says carefully, “you do know that I don’t plan on just sending you away, right?”

His grin is fast and easy, secure and confident; she likes how obviously certain of himself he is.  “Yeah, I kind of had that figured out, kadan.”

She shakes her head.  “You shouldn’t have to work for free,” she tells him. 

He tilts his head, watches her for a moment, and then asks, “You’re really worried about this?” with something like surprise in his tone.

“Of course I am!”  She pushes off of his desk to stand with her hands on her hips as she glares at him, because she needs the extra inches of height to look down on him.  “So you’re sleeping with me – so what?  You agreed to come on for pay.  It’s your job.  I shouldn’t expect you to do it for free just because we’re lovers.” 

He snorts.  “It’s not because we’re lovers,” he says, and pushes up out of his chair to come around the broken desk to take her hands.  “It’s because we’re more than that.”

“Are we?” she asks sharply, and instantly regrets it.

They do not talk about their relationship easily.  Theirs is not a romance to make Cassandra sigh happily, or even a progressing story to appease Varric’s sense of plot advancement.  They are lovers, yes, and they are friends – but what they have between them, as valued and precious as it is, is defined only by early ground rules and intricately carved dragon’s teeth worn on leather straps around each of their necks.

Herah stands before him unwilling to show that she is trembling, wishing she’d bit her tongue and too proud to do more than lift her chin in defiance even as she rues her words.

The Iron Bull’s one remaining eye has gone hard.  He stands stiffly in front of her, holding himself tight and unmoving deliberately, and his face could be carved out of stone for as impassive as it is.  He looks cruel when he stands this still: harsh and proud and fierce, intimidating and unapologetic for it.  A muscle works in his jaw, but that’s the only sign of his anger.  “Yes,” he says, voice glacial with the temper she can hear him struggling to contain, “we are.”

She chooses her words with care, frightened of saying the wrong thing.  “Then why can’t I want you to be paid for the work you’re doing?” she asks.

His nostrils flare, but his voice remains calm.  “Because I don’t want to be paid,” he says, biting each word off as though they offend him, and leaves it at that.

The silence stretches between them for long, tense heartbeats.  _Why not?_ Herah wants to ask, and the look in his eye all but dares her to ask. 

She is not a coward, she reminds herself, and opens her mouth on an inhale to ask.

He steps forward and kisses her before she can so much take a breath.  It’s no tame kiss, either: his hands are rough where they reach for her, snatching her forward to crush her against him, and his mouth is hard and demanding, plundering hers with a kind of controlled desperation that all but overwhelms her.  He kisses her until she’s nearly faint from lack of breath, and when he lifts his mouth from hers so she can gasp for air he turns his attention to her throat instead.

His assault on her is thorough.  He doesn’t let up, even when she is writhing underneath him, naked and shuddering and clutching at his shoulders as he moves inside her, his own breathing ragged and his muscles locked tight as he takes her.  Bull’s hands on her are demanding, almost desperate.  There’s none of his usual careful control, but that lack doesn’t frighten her: instead, it’s exhilarating for her to realize that she’s able to affect him this much.  She isn’t afraid of him: he will not hurt her.  Even in his frantic rough assault, he brings her to her peak with determined skill and eager effort. 

He wants her so much that she can break his vaunted self-control, and that knowledge sends her tumbling over the edge again in his arms, arching her back and panting his name even as he chases his own release with punishing fervor.  He follows her to completion with a long, low groan she feels from her toes to her horns as he stutters and stills within her.

They lie entwined on his bed afterwards, both catching their breaths.  Herah strokes her hands up and down the muscles of her lover’s back, marveling at the strength contained there as he rests his head beside her and attempts to recover.  A scrap of her antaam-saar catches her eye, from where it’s caught on the corner of his desk; he is still mostly wearing his pants, and his shoulder harness is digging into the soft flesh of her upper arm.  His weight feels solid on her, protective rather than smothering, and Herah takes a deep breath and feels suddenly powerful.

He needs her, she realizes in amazement, running her hands along the scratches she’s left on his back as if to soothe the sting of them.  This huge warrior of a man, unafraid of the world and so sure of himself – he wants her so badly he needs her.

He grunts, and shifts off of her.  “Sorry,” he murmurs as she takes a deep breath once free of his weight.  He slides towards the edge of the bed, swings his feet towards the floor, and pauses.  He stares almost blankly down at himself, at his boots still on and his pants askew, and shakes his head as though to wake himself.

Herah smiles, and stretches.  Her muscles are singing, and her heart pounds in rapid victory, the same way it does after coming through a battle.  “Please don’t apologize for that,” she tells him, and she smiles again at the feminine satisfaction she can hear in her voice.  “That was amazing.”

“Yeah?” he asks, and she can hear the skepticism, the speculation whirling in his head.  He looks almost dazed, as much as she’s ever seen him so, and she revels in knowing that she was the one to tear down his carefully controlled façade.

“Yeah,” she says, and sits up to curl herself against his back, his skin warm and flushed against hers.  She slips her arms around him and rests one over his heart to feel it rush along beneath her fingertips.  One of his hands comes up almost automatically to touch hers, fingers awkward at first until they firm and press down over her hand.  His heart is tripping along beneath her hand, hard and fast and wild.

She kisses the side of his neck just to feel him shudder, reveling in the proof of how much she can affect him.  “You’re amazing,” she says, feeling the need to protect him, to care for this immensely powerful man who does so much for her. 

His laugh is low, still somewhat stunned.  “You too, kadan,” he says, and his hand squeezes hers tight.  “You too.”


	20. Chapter 19

## 19 

“Back before,” she says one afternoon as they stand on her balcony together, “I mean, before we went to the Arbor Wilds and before Corypheus raised the Temple…”

“Yeah?” he asks absently, keeping his eye fixed on the valley below.  The Chargers are down there, though Herah has no idea how he can distinguish which small dots are them compared to the soldiers they’re working with.

Which is just a distraction, anyway, from the question she wants to ask.  So shakes her head, refocuses.  “When I tried to say thank you for everything and you thought I was talking about not making it back,” she says, and she suddenly has his full and startled attention, “you told me _katoh_ , and I stopped.”

“Yes,” he says slowly, and as though he remembers that conversation, he shivers.  He steps forward, already reaching for her, and rests his large hands on her bare shoulders, replacing the heat of the sun with the warmth of his palms.  “I don’t want to think about anything happening to you, kadan.”  His eye is bright and somehow unhappy, his face somber.  “I can’t.”

“I know,” she says, remembering how his voice had broken before when he’d admitted as much to her the first time.  Because touch soothes him more than words, she steps forward into his arms, lets him pull her close to reassure himself that she is still there.  “It all worked out,” she reminds him, speaking into his shoulder as he pulls her close.  “I’m all right.  The world didn’t end.”

She feels as much as hears the sigh gather in his chest and release, his concerns and worries for her rushing out of his lungs with that heavy breath.  “Yeah.  And I’m damned glad about that.”  His arms tighten, and she feels his chin rest on the crown of her head between her horns.  “So,” he says after a moment’s embrace, loosening his hold on her so that he can better look down at her face.  “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Herah is completely unsurprised that he can read her well enough to see that she’s leading up to a question.  “It’s about watch-words, actually,” she says, referencing a different part of that earlier difficult conversation, and the worry on his face clears.  He looks down at her curiously, waiting to see where she’s going with that statement.  She does her best to put her thoughts in order, now that she’s brought up the topic.  “You told me once that you’re supposed to pick a watch-word – something you wouldn’t say accidentally, something that means something to you.  Remember?”

Bull’s smile is suddenly sharp and satisfied, his hands abruptly tight against her skin.  “Yeah,” he chuckles.  “And you were naked when we were talking about this, if I remember right.”

Because that’s true enough, Herah returns his smile.  Then, with a deep breath, she states her case.  “I didn’t choose a watch-word – you gave it to me.  And then you used it on your own when you wanted me to stop.  Bull,” she asks, and she tilts her head, wondering, “Bull, did you give me _your_ watch-word to use in bed?”

He stares at her in astonishment for a heartbeat, and then he throws back his head and laughs – a long, rumbling laugh that Herah can feel from his belly to his shaking shoulders as he pulls her up against him in an affectionate and somehow approving hug.  “Ah, kadan,” he says weakly, still chuckling when he looks down at her as he regains his composure.  “I should have guessed you’d pick up on that.”

“So I’m right?” she asks, pleased and proud her hunch had been correct.

“You are,” he agrees easily.  Large fingers pinch her side, not hard enough to hurt.  “I should have known you’d figure it out.”

She grins, feels her scar stretch, and slides her hands up his chest.  “Why?” she asks.

“Because you’re a brilliant, gorgeous woman,” he responds instantly, grinning back at her, hands sliding up her sides to reach for her face and cradle it. 

She laughs despite herself.  Exasperated, she flexes her hands where they rest on his chest so that her nails dig into his skin.  He rumbles in response, clearly enjoying it from how his hands twitch on her cheeks, and Herah presses the advantage.  “Why give me your watch-word?” she clarifies.  “Why not let me pick one for myself?”

Bull’s smile is almost rueful.  “I wasn’t sure what you’d pick,” he admits.  “I can usually guess pretty close to what someone would say – that’s half the fun, figuring it out.  But with you…”  He grins, presses a fond and somehow chaste kiss to her forehead before he releases her face.  “I wasn’t sure,” he repeats.  “And I didn’t want to screw it up.  So I gave you mine.”  He steps back, though there’s no sense of dismissal or rejection as he turns away from her to again look down into the valley for the Chargers.  “Not that I get to hear it often, anyway.”

“You have to earn it,” Herah says mendaciously, and when he gives her a look in return – heat and promise and wicked intent writ large across his battered face – she all but shivers in anticipation. 

His voice is low, private.  “I have a few ideas,” he says, and his eye lingers on her as she steps up to the balcony’s wall beside him.  Then he turns his attention back down the valley, and she watches him wince.  “Aw, crap, they’re going to tip the siege engine.”  He heaves a sigh, and Herah watches with him as a weapon of war – so far down the valley that it looks like it’s made of twigs – does slowly tilt and then crash onto its side as its handlers vainly attempt to maneuver it out of the camp.

“I can guess your next question,” he says as they watch soldiers swarm around the fallen siege machine to begin the long process of righting it.

“Oh?” she asks.

“You want to know what it means.”  He gives her a sly little side-smile, indicating that he expects the question.

She laughs.  “It means you liked me, Bull,” she teases.  “You liked me enough to share your watch-word.”

“Mm, there is that,” he admits, turning to lean on the railing, abandoning his oversight of the valley in favor of watching her.  His voice rasps lower.  “It’s a mark of ownership, in a way – you’re in _my_ bed, using _my_ watch-word, under _my_ hands…”  He gives a short, clearly pleased growl.  “Yeah.  I liked that.  Still do,” he adds, looking at her side-long with his good eye. 

Herah, more touched than she’s willing to admit, reaches for his hand.  “That’s sweet,” she decides, lacing her fingers through with his.  “A little possessive, maybe, but sweet.”

The Iron Bull snorts.  “Sweet,” he says dismissively, though he doesn’t take his hand from hers.  “It’s fucking hot, and you know it.”

“Sweet,” she drawls out, to watch him squirm, and she laughs when he glares at her.  “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone the Iron Bull has a soft spot.  Wouldn’t want to ruin your big badass Qunari reputation.”

Humor flares in his eye.  “I thought you didn’t like me for my _soft_ spots,” he drawls wickedly, and squeezes her hand.

“I like you for all your spots,” Herah tells him honestly, and that earns her a real smile, a wide grin that makes her heart swell with happiness, because it’s rare that he accepts a compliment from her without deflecting it back.

“Hm,” is all he says, and then, abruptly, “Do you know what _katoh_ even means?”

Herah blinks, tilts her head to the side, and tries to remember the few words in Qunlat she knows.  “An ending, isn’t it?  It means that something has come to a stop?”  She shrugs.  “I thought that seemed appropriate, more or less.”

“That’s one meaning,” Bull agrees.  “But there are more, and that’s not quite the one I had in mind when I gave it to you.”

“Qunlat has too many meanings and not enough words,” Herah sighs, resigned to her eternal ignorance of a language so many assume she understands.  Though now she’s curious.  “What else does it mean?”

“A second meaning might be – achievement, I guess.  Completion.  A victory, or a success after a long struggle.  That’s the meaning I was thinking of when I chose it for my watch-word.”

She snorts in disbelief.  “Victory for the one saying it or the one hearing it?” she demands.

“Why not both?” he asks easily, and then, utterly shocking her, he lifts her hand to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to her fingers.  “But I was thinking of a different meaning when I gave it to you to use.”

“Too many translations,” she grouses, though her heart is tripping happily along in her chest and her skin is singing from his touch.  “Just tell me what it means.”

He is smiling as he looks at her, yet there’s something in his expression that is sober, serious.  It makes her think that this means more to him than he’s letting on, so she lets her smile fade, lets him see that she’s listening.  “It’s hard to explain.”

Herah steps forward again to stand closer to him, pulling his hand to her side, encouraging him to slide it from there to the small of her back.  He gathers her up against him almost reflexively, and she loves how carefully he treats her, how small and safe he makes her feel, how utterly protected she is in the circle of his arms.  “Try,” she suggests with smile.

He lets out a slow and thoughtful breath.  It takes him almost a full minute to speak.  “The word for sword,” he reminds her, “is _valo-kas_.”

She inclines her head.  “I did know that,” she tells him wryly, “given that’s what my company was called.”

He ignores her interruption.  “When you have a sword,” he tells her softly, fingers stroking the small of her back, “that is perfect – a perfect weapon and a perfect work of art, something that is worthy only of being wielded by a master, by someone who will recognize its perfection and wield and honor it as no one else could – then it is called a _valo-kas katoh_.”  His hands are tracing slow circles on her back.  “That, kadan, is what I was thinking about when I gave you my watch-word.  _Katoh_.  Perfection.”

He has stunned her into speechlessness.  “Bull,” she says faintly, looking up at him in astonishment.

His smile is slow, affectionate and proud and tender in a way she has never seen before.  “Kadan,” he names her, and bends to kiss her.  His kiss is gentle, very nearly reverent, and Herah trembles at how carefully he coaxes her to life against his lips.  One of his hands comes up to touch the back of her head, to smooth down through her hair to her shoulder blades.  For such a big man, his touch can be surprisingly light; there’s no demand in his fingers against her skin, no urging her towards him to deepen the kiss.  Instead, it’s just a quiet touch full of unspoken appreciation and care, and Herah is undone by it.

“Bull,” she whispers again, when their lips part enough for her to gain breath and speech again.  Her heart is full.  She looks up at him, and her heart floods, pouring happiness through her veins until her whole body tingles with the force of her joy.  Then, out of that happiness, a thought flashes into being, so swiftly and so completely that she sways with the force of it.  His arms tighten around her again, and his smile is full and so pleased that she nearly blurts her new knowledge out between them without thinking.

Iron Bull doesn’t let her speak, though her mouth is opening to form words.  He kisses her again, just as carefully, but there is heat behind it this time, and in a few bare seconds, his wicked tongue and experienced hands have roused her enough that when they break apart, her breath comes in pants and her hands curl around his forearms greedily.

Herah looks up at Iron Bull.  His face is scarred with the harsh signs of a mercenary soldier’s life; the battered visage is nearly as familiar now as her own reflection, and just as dear. 

 _I love him_ , she thinks in wonderment, heart light and clear and strong with that new knowledge, and she hauls in a desperately needed lungful of air.

“If you think,” she says, and her voice is shaky so she takes the time to swallow, to firm her tone.  “If you think,” she starts again, stronger, “that you can tell me something like that and not take me straight to bed…”

He laughs, and the serious tension between the two of them is gone in an instant, replaced by the sound of his laughter and the heat in his expression.  Without even shifting his stance, he picks her up and hefts her high in his arms.  “Who says I wasn’t planning on it?” he asks her recklessly, and she likes the glint of satisfaction in his eye as he turns to carry her back inside to her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katoh really does mean all of these things, according to the Dragon Age wiki, and if I remember right you can actually find a valo-kas katoh in DA2.
> 
> And it just makes SO MUCH SENSE in my head for katoh to have originally been Bull's watch-word.
> 
> Also: aw, Herah. You knew she'd get there eventually.
> 
> Four chapters and an epilogue to go, folks, all written and being edited. I'm hoping to post every few days from here out.


	21. Chapter 20

## 20 

Love makes things complicated, and Herah does not like complications.

It isn’t that she regrets loving the Iron Bull, she thinks, but she views it almost the same way as she views being the Inquisitor.  It’s not that she regrets that, either – but life would just be so much easier if neither were true.

Herah has just about grown used to the idea that her life will never be simple, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.

Still, it isn’t a bad life, for all it’s complicated.  She likes the way the Inquisition has settled into a wary peacetime alertness.  She likes how her people greet her with pride and respect in their tones.  She likes that there is time to deliberate over the hard choices she still makes.  She likes that a year and more after Corphyeus’s defeat, Skyhold is still her home.

She likes that Bull is hers, and she likes being his.  Something has shifted between them, and her heart is happier for it even as her mind wonders if – how – she should tell him what she feels.  But she can’t find the right time, and even the right words seem to elude her.

_I love you_ is blunt and true, of course, but there is no easy way to simply slip that into everyday conversation or even into intimate moments.  They are friends, and they are lovers, and they are even somehow more than lovers by his own admission.  She wears a dragon’s tooth he carved for her, and he in turn wears one she gave to him.  He calls her kadan, nearly every chance he gets, as though to remind them both of how much he values her.

But still, love does not have a place in their friendship – not romantic love, in any place – and love was never part of their agreement together.  She is happy and he is happy, and what they have together works; there is too much that could be lost by bringing emotion – more emotion than they’ve managed to handle already, at least – into things, and Herah likes what they have too much to risk changing it. 

It isn’t difficult to love him, and she sometimes wonders if he doesn’t actually suspect her of that tender emotion.  Certainly his own expression is sometimes softer when he watches her, and there are nights when his kisses are gloriously possessive and his touches near reverent. 

Something has changed, Herah knows, and if she’s noticed then she’s certain the Iron Bull has as well.  He was Ben-Hassrath, after all, and has always been good at reading her; it’s folly to assume that so large a shift in her feelings has gone overlooked.

She can see the difference between them, sometimes.  It’s visible in the way his eye crinkles with laughter in specific moments, in how he checks his words oddly in the middle of sentences, in the way he looks at her thoughtfully when they spend time together.  She is sure she too has her own tells, obvious to his eyes: he was Ben-Hassrath, and he retains the uncanny ability to read people at a glance.  But if he is content to let the changes go unremarked upon, then she will follow his lead. 

He has done so much for her, she thinks with a heart brimming with gratitude.  He has cared for her, guarded her, guided her; he has forced her to grow and learn, stretched her mind and her body into something stronger than she was.  She is better for how he has helped shape her.

Because of that, Herah respects the silent boundary he’s set between them, and says nothing no matter how much the words beat within her pulse.  He does not comment on the obvious shift that has occurred between them, and so she will not force him to confront it by making any declarations.  Still, he can read her well enough that she wonders if he hasn’t guessed at the truth.  His avoidance of the topic, she suspects, is deliberate, and she commits herself to honoring that.

So she keeps her love unspoken, allowing it free reign only in her actions: in how she kisses him, in how she touches him, in how she welcomes him to her bed, in how she tries to lavish care upon him the same way he so clearly does for her.  He rumbles his approval of the difference, hands tight and eager on her back, and sometimes Herah catches a glimpse of something new on his face – something she almost recognizes, something fierce and proud and happy, something that makes her heart trip and rush into pounding anticipation – and wonders if Bull wrestles with his own emotions as much as she fights with hers.

But he says nothing, and so she respects that and says nothing herself, swallowing back words of love with smiles and wicked glances that delight him.

And if, sometimes, she wishes that what they had together wasn’t quite so complicated – well, she still sometimes wishes that she was nothing more than a simple mercenary.  Neither wish is completely honest.  As much as she might complain, Herah has accepted her life as it is, and doesn’t truly want anything otherwise.  She is Inquisitor, and the Inquisition and all its burdens is hers; she is Bull’s and he is hers, and he makes her happy.

It’s enough, she tells herself as days and weeks go by, and so it is.  Even if sometimes she yearns for simpler days, she is where and what she wants to be.

She carries that knowledge with her: she knows herself well enough to know that her mental gripes do not mask any real desire for a different, simpler life.  So when there is a letter from the Valo-kas, her response is sure and swift.  She is certain in herself, and that makes confronting her past and the life she might have had easy. 

When, some weeks later, Shokrakar steps into Skyhold’s lower bailey from the gatehouse, Herah is able to stand there waiting for her with no doubts in her heart.

Shokrakar looks exactly as Herah remembers her: her white-grey hair is shaved close to her skull, and her arms are wiry with corded muscle.  Scars trace her bronzed skin, ugly and rough, a testament to a mercenary’s life; brown tattoos cover each arm in blocky geometric patterns.  Her left horn is broken off at the base, and her right horn juts back from her brow like a spear set for a charge.  For all it’s been more than three years since Herah has seen her, she can still read easily her old Captain’s face: annoyance, exhaustion, interest, a kind of sour practicality that has ensured the success of the Valo-kas.

The limp is new, though, her right leg dragging and heavy, and instead of a pair of wicked daggers at her back, Shokrakar leans on a thick walking crutch with burnished metal caps on each end.

She stops in the bailey, and cranes her neck up to look at the battlements of the main keep soaring high overhead.  Herah feels pride in the Inquisition, fierce and certain, swell up within her, and that pride stretches her lips into a smile that tugs at her scar.

“Not bad,” Shokrakar says grudgingly, looking down from the towers to meet Herah’s eyes squarely.  “Not bad at all.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Herah says back to her former captain mildly, and steps forward to clasp her hand in greeting.

Shokrakar stays for two weeks.  She’s on her way to Denerim, contracted as an advisor to an arl there, but her maimed leg means the travel is difficult for her and she’s glad to spend time in Skyhold regaining her strength.  Herah doesn’t ask how her leg was lamed; Shokrakar would tell her if she cared to share details, and her silence on the subject is surly and annoyed.

Instead they talk of the more mundane present.  Shokrakar admires the walls of Skyhold, the neat tent city filled with soldiers in the valley below.  She meets Herah’s advisors, and plays decently nice – Josephine is scandalized, but Herah gets the sense Cullen approves and that Leliana is amused. 

Shokrakar meets the Iron Bull in the middle of her second week at Skyhold, when he brings the Chargers back from a contract Leliana had given him out in Emprise du Lion.  Herah isn’t sure what she expected from the meeting; as it is, it goes well enough.  Bull is professional with Shokrakar, one captain to another, and Shokrakar is gruff and short with him, which means she wants to be rude and is restraining herself.

Her eyes are sharp enough to notice the halves of a dragon’s tooth they both wear, though, even though Bull is decently restrained and only slaps at her ass when Shokrakar’s back is turned.  So before they join the Chargers for the evening meal, Shokrakar corners Herah in the corridor leading down from her room.

“I’m only going to ask you once,” she starts, “because I don’t think you’re an idiot.  But do you know what you’re doing this time around?”

Herah can’t parse that sentence into anything meaningful.  “This time around?” she asks, bewildered.

Shokrakar thumps her fist onto Herah’s breastbone, where her dragon’s tooth rests on a leather strip around her neck.  “You ever stop to think about why there are no Tal-Vashoth in Bull’s Chargers even though it’s supposedly led by one?” she points out shrewdly.  “You got burned by a Qunari once, Adaar.  Or rather, you burned him.  You want to go that route again?”

Herah shakes her head, understanding dawning.  “Bull _is_ Tal-Vashoth,” she corrects.

Shokrakar gives her a withering look.  “Not according to what I’ve heard,” she says.  “There’s a reason there’s no one else with horns in the Chargers, Adaar.  The man’s still a Qunari, for all he acts like he’s not.  Every merc captain from here to the Free Marches knows that – there’s a reason we’ve never taken any jobs with the Chargers.”

Herah’s smile fades as she looks at Shokrakar, and a niggling doubt raises its head in the back of her mind for a brief, frightening instant.  Then her sense of self reasserts itself, and she lifts her jaw, squashing that doubt down into nothingness.  “How old are your sources?” she asks.

“They’re solid,” the older woman says coolly.

“I don’t doubt it,” Herah returns, with an edge in her voice that she never would have dared use against her captain if she didn’t have years of being Inquisitor behind her.  “But I asked how old they were.”

Shokrakar’s eyes narrow.  “Cuthrin’s band,” she says after a pause.  “At the contract we took out by the Mirrored Lake.”

Herah’s lips pull upwards, her suspicions confirmed.  “Five years ago,” she says.

“Yes.”

And Herah laughs, to Shokrakar’s obvious disgust.  “Five years ago,” she says when she reigns herself back in, “Bull was a Ben-Hassrath spy pretending to be a Tal-Vashoth mercenary captain so he could send reports back to Par Vollen.”  Her smile is triumphant.  “Then he joined the Inquisition, and made a different call.”

“A different call,” Shokrakar repeats quietly, though her eyes have narrowed further.  “You mind explaining that in a way that doesn’t make me want to go stab him in the back for being Ben-Hassrath?”

It’s Bull’s story to tell, not hers, so Herah’s words are clipped.  “He refused a direct order and knowingly became Tal-Vashoth so good people wouldn’t die,” she says, because anything more than that is private.  She grimaces.  “He wasn’t precisely thrilled to do so, but it was his call and he’s never gone back on it.”

“You believe that?” Shokrakar scoffs.  “You’re Vashoth, Adaar; you don’t know how hard it is to walk away from the Qun.  It’s not that easy.”

Temper lends her voice strength.  “I believe _him_ ,” she snaps.  “And I saw how hard it was for him to leave.”

“So, what, you rewarded him for that?” her old captain taunts with a lewd gesture.  “If you just spread your legs to get him to leave the Qun, I can only _imagine_ what magic you’ve got in your-“

Herah hits her.

She is not a schoolgirl, nor some prissy noblewoman, nor a limp-wristed Chantry sister.  She is not the farmer’s daughter she once was, with untutored strength and no training in how to use it.  She is not a healer-mage, nor a fragile enchanter who stands back from the fray to remain safe from battle.

Herah is, at heart, a mercenary, and she fights like one.  She is a Knight-Enchanter, used to the chaos of combat; she was a mercenary lieutenant, used to dirty brawls and knock-down fights.  She does not pull her punches.  She knows exactly how to form a fist, and she uses perfect, brutal technique honed in dozens of bar-fights and melees to pull her arm back and belt Shokrakar right across her face.

Shokrakar’s head snaps to the side with the blow, and she stumbles back a step, scrabbling against the wall as her bad leg gives out beneath her.  Herah doesn’t follow her: she’s breathing hard, and is mildly surprised at herself.  Her knuckles sting, and she resists the urge to shake her hand out as Shokrakar regains her balance with the aid of her crutch.

“Damn,” her former captain says.  She puts a hand up to her face, feels her jaw with prodding fingers.  “You’ve got a decent arm, you know.  Damn!  I’m impressed.  In pain, but impressed.” 

“You deserved that,” Herah says coolly, torn between anger and amusement.

“Damn right I did,” she agrees.  “So!  That’s how it is.”  And she rubs at her jaw once more, opening her mouth and wiggling her jaw to make sure it isn’t broken.  She eyes Herah approvingly, without any accusation in her glance as she snaps her mouth shut.  “Can’t blame me for making sure, not after Kosrin.”

That name doesn’t make her flinch anymore.  Herah just snorts.  “Bull isn’t Kosrin,” she says.  “And I’m not who I was then, either.”

Shokrakar stares at Herah, and then shakes her head.  “I can tell,” she says, and blows out a breath.  “Damn, Adaar, you’ve really got a type, haven’t you?  Ben-Hassrath, really?  You can’t go for simple farmers or something?”  She turns away, adjusts her crutch and her balance.  “What is _with_ you and Qunari?”

Herah releases a breath she wasn’t aware of holding and resists the urge to laugh.  “I didn’t do it deliberately,” she says, and feeling the need to defend herself, she adds, “And I didn’t start sleeping with him until after he was Tal-Vashoth.”

Shokrakar snorts.  “Well, maybe that’s why he’s not burned to a crisp already,” she snipes.  “Seriously, Adaar.”  And she looks back over her shoulder for a brief instant.  “You could pick less complicated lovers.  You have to admit it looked bad.”  And, grudgingly and without looking at Herah directly, she adds, “I was worried.”

“Like you said,” Herah replies evenly, “I’m not an idiot.”  She is, however, deeply touched that her former captain values her enough to confront her about it, and to prove it, she makes a show of stretching out her hand.  “You’ve got a jaw like rock, by the way.”

Shokrakar smirks.  “Yeah.  It’s a gift.”  She uncrosses her arms, moves back to stand beside her former lieutenant once more.  “So.  Tal-Vashoth, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And sharing your bed, looks like.”

“Yes.”

“A good captain?”

“Yes.”

Shokrakar’s glare could peel paint.  “Stop being pithy,” she demands.  “What do you think of the Chargers?”

Herah is tempted to somehow turn her response mono-syllabic, but resists the urge.  “I like them,” she answers instead, and finds herself responding as though she were back in the Valo-kas giving a report to her captain.  “Smaller than the Valo-kas – sixty, maybe seventy members?  Bull hires them on mostly as small-scale skirmishers – melee, ranged, support, some magic but they don’t advertise it.  Fairly well balanced.  They’ve been with the Inquisition for almost four years now.”

“Hm.”  And Shokrakar looks away from her again.  There is a long pause, and then a long-suffering sigh.  “Then I suppose we should go to dinner and you should introduce me again,” she says.  “And this time, I’ll play nice.”

Shokrakar’s _nice_ is still blunt and acerbic; the Iron Bull laughs himself breathless at her critiques and barbed commentary and remains unoffended by her rather rough personality.

“She’s looking out for you,” he tells Herah that night as they share her bed.  “I can’t argue with that.” 

It is on her very last day in Skyhold that Shokrakar says, bluntly, “Meraad is leading the Valo-kas now.”  She thumps her leg angrily.  “I’m no good in a fight anymore, and he’s decent at bossing the rest about.”

Herah remembers Meraad – a bulky man with curved horns and an unnerving stare – and nods.  “I liked him,” she tells her former Captain.  “He’s good with the soldiers and fair with the mages.  He’ll do well.”

“You’d have done better,” Shokrakar says sourly, and Herah would be surprised at the knowledge that Shokrakar viewed her as a potential captain except that the Iron Bull had predicted it years ago.  Now there’s something like bitter amusement left there, pride and a tinge of regret and a realization that yes, she could have been captain of the Valo-kas, and yes, she’d probably have done a better job than the dour Meraad.  So she gives her old captain a twisted grin, and lifts her tankard in silent acknowledgement, because there’s nothing else she can do about how her life led her away from that path.

Shokrakar raises her own tankard to return the salute – they’re in the tavern, because it is where both of them are the most comfortable – and glares at Herah.  “You just had to go and get yourself all involved with this Inquisition mess, didn’t you?”

Herah snorts out a laugh.  “It’s not like I had much choice in the matter,” she says wryly, lifting her left hand, where the Anchor flickers and flares like firelight.

“I guess not,” her Captain allows, though she still looks unhappy about it.  “Still.  I wanted you for the Valo-kas, not for the Inquisition.  You were a good merc, but you’d be a better captain.  All this –” and she waves her hand around the tavern, encompassing not just the tavern but all of Skyhold beyond it.  “All this is good and all, but Adaar – you’re a mercenary at heart.  Why are you still tangled up in this mess?”

“They still need me,” Herah answers, both because it’s the truth and because it’s the simplest way to explain everything else involved in that decision. 

Shokrakar huffs.  “Need, sure.  But the rest of the world?  They don’t get that, and they’re getting sick of the Inquisition, you know.  They’re sitting safe and pretty again these days, and you’re a reminder of how close they came to losing all of that.  They might need you, but they sure as hell don’t want you.”  She eyes Herah shrewdly, a measuring gaze Herah remembers all too well.  “Things are calming down, now.  You know what happens to folks like us once a job’s over.”

_We’re here for the job, and that’s the only reason they tolerate us,_ Herah remembers hearing time and again during her career with the Valo-kas.  _Once the job’s done, they want us gone – and they’ll be eager to help get rid of us.  No one wants to remember the ones who did their dirty work for them._

She’d learned that lesson early in her days with the Valo-kas.  She has the scars to prove it.

“I know,” she says quietly in return.  “Believe me, I know.”

“You need a plan for when they don’t want you anymore,” Shokrakar continues bluntly.  “An escape plan.  Do you have one?”

Herah shrugs with one shoulder.  “Mercenary work, I suppose,” she says.  “But I haven’t really thought too far ahead yet.”

“Better start thinking.  The Valo-kas could use you, you know; there’s enough of them that still remember you that they’d take you back in a heartbeat.  And I’m sure,” and she can’t quite keep the annoyance from her voice, “the Chargers would take you.”

Her smile is faint.  “I know.”

Silence stretches out between them, and Herah finds herself watching the frantic light of the Anchor as it pulses in her hand.

Shokrakar watches her.  “Does it hurt?” she asks eventually.

It’s a question few think to ask.  The answer is complicated now, and as Herah tries to choose her words, the Anchor picks that moment to pulse, hard and fast and frantic.  Her fingers snap down over her palm almost instinctually, her arm tight and tense against the pain in her fist.  She stumbles back off of the bench she’s sitting on, and lands splayed out on the floor; Krem is at her side almost before she falls to steady her, and just behind him comes Bull.  He grips her shoulders as her hand spasms, and when the pain finally dies, he helps pull her to her feet.

“You all right, kadan?” he asks, worry threaded through his voice.  Krem, always quick to help, hands her a cup of water off the table, and she takes it gratefully.

“Fine,” she manages, with a weak smile up at him as she finishes the water.  He returns it, but his smile is as strained as hers.  He and Krem help settle her back down onto the bench beside Shokrakar.

“Huh,” Shokrakar says, as Iron Bull lingers behind Herah, hands brushing across her shoulders.

It takes a moment for the ache in her palm to fade; when it does, Herah flexes her hand back and forth, trying to work out the soreness. 

The Anchor hadn’t felt like this, years ago when it had been new.  It had been warm, then, like fire contained in her palm, and that had comforted her because she understood fire.  She’d almost been able to forget that it was there.  But sometime over the past few years – ever since she’d used the Anchor to rip open the Fade and send Corypheus to his fate – the feel of it had changed.

It still feels warm, and it still pulses and flickers like the Breach itself had done when it hung open in the sky.   But now the best she can hope for on good days is for it to feel like she’s grasping a nettle in her hand, fiery and prickling.  On bad days, the heat twitches up from her palm into her arm, and the Anchor feels like live embers with wicked barbs to dig into her skin. 

And occasionally, like today, the Anchor spits and sparks and flares up into high, bright pain that leaves her struggling for breath against the burn of it all.  Her friends have grown used to her sudden gasps, the way she grabs at her hand when the pain slinks up her arm.  It doesn’t happen often: once every few weeks.  But it’s agony when it does occur.

Tentatively, fearing another burst, Herah opens her hand: the Anchor burns and stings where it writhes in her palm, but only with what is becoming the usual pain.  Bull’s hand squeezes her shoulders, reassuringly, and she gulps in a breath of air.

“It didn’t used to hurt,” she admits to her former captain.  “It’s getting worse.”

“Yeah?” Shokrakar asks challengingly.  “How much worse?”

Herah blows out a breath, and thinks of the worry in Bull’s face and the concerned glances from her advisors.  The Iron Bull’s hands are warm and solid on her shoulders, grounding her in reality, and she leans back against him.  He shifts his weight, so that she can lean back against the solid muscles of his thighs.  He doesn’t say a word.

“A lot worse,” she says simply, and clenches her hand into a fist.  “I’m not coming back to the Valo-kas, Captain.”

Shokrakar waits a beat, and Herah watches her put the pieces together.  She’s an intelligent woman, tough and strong enough to lead a mercenary company, smart enough to manage her people and her time wisely.  She can read into Herah’s words all the fears Herah has not yet given voice, all the worries she’s not allowing herself to think too much about.

Shokrakar looks up at the Iron Bull’s impassive face – blank and shielded, Herah knows, to avoid broadcasting his own worries.  Then she looks back at Herah, and she does her best to be still and expressionless as her former captain studies her.

“Damn,” Shokrakar says, after a long sigh.  She turns away from Herah, takes a drink from her ale.  “Damn.”

Herah shuts her eyes, feels her hand twinge with the heat of the Anchor, and resists the urge to ball her fingers into a fist.  “Yeah,” she says, and Bull’s fingers kneads gently at her neck.  “That about sums it up.”


	22. Chapter 21

## 21 

“There’s a contract Red wants to send the Chargers out on,” Bull tells her one morning as she glances across the war table.  He leans on the side of the table, watching her sort through her papers.  “One of her agents found some rumors of Red Templars holed up in those caves out in the Emerald Graves trying to mess with giants and red lyrium – she wants the Chargers to go in and flush them out.”

“Sapper will enjoy that,” she responds almost absently, flexing her left hand to work through the soreness there.  “Didn’t he say he’s got some new smoke bomb he’s been working on recently?”

“Mm.”  Bull pushes himself away from the table, comes around to stand beside her.  “I was thinking of letting Krem take them out on his own this time.”

“Against Red Templars and lyrium-poisoned giants?”  She looks up, surprised, and rubs her hand against her thigh.  “And there are regular giants out there, Bull, and those enormous bears – are you sure you want to throw all of that at Krem at once?”

“He can handle it,” Iron Bull says, though there’s a slight hint of concern in his voice.  “I was thinking maybe it would be better if I stayed here this time around.” 

He reaches out and picks up her hand where she’s pressing it against her leg.  His hands are bigger than hers, easily able to press her hand between his palms to apply welcome pressure to the ache there.

She sighs.  “You should go,” she tells him, though she steps forward to be closer to him so that he can better work over her palm.

He clasps her hand between both of his, and begins to squeeze.  The pressure is almost painful in how relieving it is: her bones and flesh protest, but the ache of the Anchor dims.

“I’m not sure I want to,” he says evenly, meeting her eyes.  “This – this is bad, kadan.  And it’s getting worse, not better.”

“Dagna is studying it,” Herah counters quietly.  “And Leliana has some feelers out.”

“But they haven’t found a way to fix it yet.”

Herah sighs.  “No,” she admits.  “They haven’t.”

He releases her hand, and shifts his fingers so that he can hold it facing his face, his thumbs pressing deeply into her palm to fight the pain that blossoms there.

“It’s getting worse,” he says somberly.  “And it’s getting worse faster.”

She shuts her eyes, because she can’t dispute his statements.  “Yes.”

“Kadan…” 

She opens her eyes to look up at him: he’s unhappy, serious, looking at her with concern.  His thumbs have stilled on her hand. 

“Kadan,” he says again, after a moment, and lifts her hand to his lips to kiss her fingers.  “I don’t want to leave you with this.”

The Anchor flashes and flares, and she winces, pulling her hand back instinctively towards her chest.  He prevents the motion, gripping her wrist and forcing her fingers apart to keep her hand from cramping up.  She cries out at the touch, knees going weak with pain even as she’s grateful for his aid, and she rests her head against his chest until the agony passes.

She’s silent, regaining her composure, for as long as she dares, until she’s as strong as she’s able to be.  “There’s nothing you can do about it,” she says at last.  “And you don’t like seeing it flare up.  You should go with the Chargers.”

“I don’t like seeing you in pain,” he counters gently, letting her straighten to face him.  “I don’t like being helpless.”

“I know,” she says, and shuts her eyes.  “I don’t like it either.”

They are silent for a long moment, holding on to each other next to the war table, and Herah takes the time to weigh her options.  When she does speak, her voice is low, gentle.  “There’s nothing you can do,” she repeats.  “And you like fighting lyrium giants, and Krem could use the backup with as crazy as the Emerald Graves are right now.”

His hand strokes up and down her back, warm and tender.  “Only if you’re sure,” he murmurs.  “It’s a two-month contract – we won’t be back before that mess at Halamshiral.”

They have gone longer than two months apart before, but that was before the Anchor began to wage war against her body. 

“I’ll be all right,” she promises him aloud, though the words are as much for her own reassurance as his.  She forces herself to smile, to tease him.  “And we can do our best to break a bed or two at the Winter Palace – I’m sure they can afford the damage.”

He doesn’t laugh, and his hands still on her shoulders.  “I’ll stay behind if you ask me to,” he tells her honestly.

“I know,” she says, and part of her desperately wants to ask him to remain.  Part of her wants to clutch him close and beg him to stay so that she has the comfort of his presence, so that if things get worse he will be there, so that when she’s frightened she can turn to him.  But she doesn’t feel like she can ask that of him – or that even if she could, that she should.  The Chargers are his – his friends and his livelihood all rolled into one – and she doesn’t want to deny him either. 

Mostly, though, asking him to stay is admitting that something is wrong: that she’s frightened of the Anchor for the first time in years, and that she’s worried for what it means for her future.  And she isn’t ready to face that yet, so she makes her decision.

“I appreciate it,” she says, and she stretches up onto her tip-toes to carefully plant a fond kiss on his cheek.  “But I’ll be all right, and the Chargers will be the better for having you there with them in person.”

He looks unhappy with her decision, but doesn’t argue it.

He’s gentle with her the night before he leaves, tender and soft and sweet in a way that seems so at odds with his exuberant and demanding personality.  Herah revels in it, in how cherished he makes her feel, and she kisses him goodbye the next morning with words of love firmly tucked back deeply in her mind where they won’t accidentally escape.

“I’ll see you in Orlais,” he promises her.  And he taps her chin.  “You send word if it gets worse, and I can get back here sooner.”

“I will,” she tells him, but his face is troubled and she knows he knows she’s lying.

“Kadan,” he says, and emotions flicker across his face, quick and half-formed.  She almost expects him to say something else, but instead he simply steps forward to wrap his arms around her.  He lifts her off her feet with the embrace, and then bends her over backwards to give her a dramatic and very public kiss where they stand on the flagstones by the gatehouse.

“You just think on that while I’m gone,” he rumbles in her ear as he sets her back on solid ground.  His smile is wide and carefree and somehow worried beneath the joy it indicates.  “Stay safe, kadan.”

“Take care of yourself, Bull,” Herah tells him, still catching her breath.  She could say half a dozen other things, as well, but instead she contents herself with, “I’ll miss you.”

Those words sharpen his smile so that it’s real again.  “Good,” he says simply, and turns away.

The Anchor flares up again that night, and Herah misses him for more than his comfort. 

Still, she’s kept busy: Halamshiral again beckons, and while that sours her mood, it at least provides her with enough to do to keep her mind off of the matters of missing the Iron Bull and dreading her hand’s next painful flare.  Leliana eyes her suspiciously whenever she winces, and Josephine’s words trail off when the Anchor flickers in her palm like fire.  So Herah takes to wearing thin leather gloves almost all the time.  It doesn’t stop the pain, but she is growing used to living with it: the gloves at least prevent others from seeing that the Anchor seems to be swelling, growing darker and larger and more frantic in the palm of her hand.

Halamshiral is just as she remembers it: decadent and ornate and filled with poison.  Frills and pretty words disguise thorns and intrigue, and Herah puts on her formal uniform with distaste to go forth and face the council.

The Iron Bull is, of course, a bright side to the meeting: he and the Chargers arrive a day late because of a bandit attack in the Exalted Plains, and he very enthusiastically apologizes for the delay when they are in bed together that night.

All her friends have gathered, and Herah is almost embarrassed by the effort Leliana has made to see that everyone has been called back to support her.  But she’s too grateful to feel any bit of shame: she hasn’t seen most of them in over a year, some in nearly two, and for a brief beautiful spell of days, it’s just like the best of the old times. 

Then the mood shifts, and Herah can’t do a thing to prevent it.  The council turns harsh, and criticism heaps upon her from all sides. 

What began as a joyous reunion falters somehow, and more and more Herah starts to feel as though she’s attending her own memorial service.  It isn’t the Inquisition’s funeral, though from the way the talks are headed it might as well be.  But Herah feels like she’s already wearing a shroud whenever her companions greet her, with frightened eyes and determined false cheer.  Sera’s face is worried, and the furrows on Thom’s forehead are deeper than ever.  There’s less of a swagger to Vivienne’s steps, less laughter in Varric’s eyes.  Dorian looks at her with concern and even pity; Cassandra’s lips shape prayers when she thinks Herah isn’t looking. 

Cole looks at her with clear tear-filled eyes, and his silence is somehow even worse than if he had spoken. 

The Iron Bull stays at her side, an ever-present shadow, and Herah leans on him more than she wants to admit.

It is almost a relief when complications arise – because of course they do – and Herah can pull off the hated shirt of her uniform as Inquisitor and shrug back into the antaam-saar she’s more used to wearing.  She ties her cords into place with practiced, habitual movements, and settles the silk fabric around her without second thought.  Her staff is smooth and familiar in her hands, her traveling boots worn and comfortable.

It feels like old times, like the world is ending again and they’re two years in the past, gathering together to fight against insurmountable odds.  She likes to see the way Bull shrugs into his battle-harness, at home with the armor and well-balanced with the weight of his axe slung across his back.  She likes to watch Sera count her potion bottles with cackling laughter, to see Rainier narrowing his eyes as he tests the edge of his sword, to listen to Dorian muttering enchantments or Varric murmuring to his crossbow.  It feels normal to ask some friends to come with her to watch her back and to ask others to stand guard for her return.

It’s almost infectious, this elation at being back in action.  Everyone moves with purpose again: it’s no longer a memorial, Herah thinks, and she rolls her shoulders with satisfaction.  She admits her own fear only in the privacy of her own mind, allowing herself to think about it directly for the first time: she might be dying, and there’s fear in that thought, but there’s a fierce satisfaction to the realization that she can at least die on her feet making a difference.

Iron Bull catches her eye as they move out, falling back into old habits casually.  “Look at us,” he encourages her as they scramble out of the first eluvian and into what looks to be little more than a wasteland.  For the first time in what feels like ages, he sounds completely happy again.  “The whole team together again to kick some ass.  Feels good, doesn’t it, kadan?”

It does, and she’s about to agree with him, when from somewhere behind her, Sera sniggers.  “Is that your naked name?” she demands, and she exaggerates Bull’s voice when she repeats the word.  “ _Kadan._   Is that what you call each other when you’re naked in the dark?”

Herah laughs despite herself, and risks a glance back up the path to see Iron Bull roll his eyes.

“It’s a title of honor,” he explains patiently, humoring Sera, “for the woman I love.”

Herah trips over her own feet.

Dorian is nearest to her, and he jumps forward a step to help catch her as Sera squeals a delighted and giggling response back to Bull.  Herah straightens herself out with a heave from Dorian’s strong arm as Iron Bull growls something at Sera, whose response was apparently too flippant for his liking.

“I _had_ forgotten about the pet names,” Dorian interjects with a wink at Herah, helping her regain her footing.  “Tell me, is that the only one, or are there more?  I do love a good gossip.”

“That’s the only one,” she manages, though her brain has stuttered to a stunned halt some eight steps behind her, and she’s only moving forward now because walking is habit.

“Hmph,” he says.  “A pity.  And so _Qunari_ , too – so harsh and blunt.  Now you see, if we were lovers, my dear Inquisitor, I promise I would come up with a far more poetic title for you.  _Amata,_ perhaps, or _carissima_.”

Dorian’s flirting is just as habitual and welcome as ever, and she forces herself to smile with him.  Her scar stings, and she touches the tip of her tongue to where it stretches to soften the ache.  “I don’t know,” she says, and chances a look back at Bull.  “I’m quite content with the one I’ve got.”

The Iron Bull meets her gaze evenly, almost serenely, his eye steady and his expression carefully neutral.  But as she finishes speaking, the corner of his expressive mouth tilts up into what is almost a smile. 

“Hmph,” Dorian repeats, though he’s smiling now too.  He runs a finger across his mustache, and asks, “Do you know what it means?  I’m still sure Tevene can do better.”

Herah opens her mouth to answer – she knows this one; she remembers Iron Bull telling her _the place that holds your heart_ – and Iron Bull’s voice interrupts her before she can speak.

“My heart,” he says, so curtly that his words are nearly a grunt.  “It means _my heart_.”

Herah and Dorian both stop walking to stare at Bull.  “That’s – almost poetic, as far as Qunlat goes,” Dorian says, clearly surprised.  “I’m impressed, actually.”

“Me, too,” Herah manages as Iron Bull casually lopes forward the few strides required to catch up with them.

_My heart_ , she thinks again, and _the woman I love._

She stares up at Iron Bull as though seeing him for the first time.  His face is sharp and scarred, one eye permanently covered by his perpetual eyepatch.  His shoulders are broad and battered; his arms long and powerful; his hands calloused and rough with missing fingers. 

_The woman I love_ , she hears again, a rumbling explanation not even directed at her, and it has stopped her world. 

He stops in front of her and gives her an easy-going grin.  “I haven’t heard any complaints about it,” he says to Dorian, ostensibly still talking about calling her _kadan_.  But his eye is dark and intent on her, and Herah knows that’s not what he’s referring to.

Herah looks up at the Iron Bull without speaking, and suspects that her heart is in her eyes: everything she has never said and everything she dares to hope.  Whatever he reads there has Bull smiling, and he takes another long step forward to snatch her up and kiss her, long and hard, in the middle of the rocky wasteland all around them.

“Woo!” Sera cheers, and then giggles.  “Get a room!  But later, yeah?  We’ve got a job to do here first.”

“Later,” Herah agrees breathlessly, looking up at Bull as he grins at her.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice is so low and rumbling that something in her belly clenches when he speaks.  “Later.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You knew the stated meaning of kadan would show up here eventually. And obviously Dorian is just playfully flirting with Herah; as awesome as she is and as good as friends as they are, she's clearly not his type. ;)
> 
> Also: In my playthrough, in that last romance cut scene before the Arbor Wilds, neither Herah nor Iron Bull confessed love for each other.  Which made Bull’s little response to Sera in Trespasser the very first time that actual love came up between them in terms of their relationship, and I thought it worked so well – and fit their story so perfectly – that it instantly became my little head canon for the two of them, and basically inspired the plot bunny that became this (much longer than anticipated) story.


	23. Chapter 22

## 22 

_Later_ is not as awkward as Herah feared it would be.

She has an expansive private room overlooking the grand gardens of the Divine, and Bull follows her into the room they’ve been sharing for days without hesitation.  He waits patiently while she shuts the door, and does not speak while she does up the locks nor while she carefully sets her staff down by her side of the bed where she can grab it quickly if she needs it.

She could be subtle about this, she thinks as she turns to face him.  Options flitter through her brain like birds darting above a field.  She could say nothing, and let lust and heat and physicality drive the discussion they should have away from their minds.  She could dance around the issue with vague and diplomatic words, and let Bull use his Ben-Hassrath talents to direct or avoid the conversation as he chooses.  She could ignore or deny, grow angry at his deception or frustrated with his silence.  She could let things linger as they are, and not press the issue.

But the Anchor sparks in her hand, angry and ugly, and she isn’t sure how much time she has left.  So she clenches her left hand into a fist, and looks at her lover with clear eyes and quiet resolve.

She lifts her chin.  “So,” she says simply, and gathers all her courage.  “How long have you been in love with me?”

Bull snorts, amused rather than uncomfortable with her question, and steps forward to stand in front of her.  “I don’t know,” he answers quietly, never looking away from her.

Her breath streams out of her in a long sigh, and she looks up at him.  The Iron Bull stands before her, still and silent, waiting on her words.  Herah is suddenly reminded of how their whole arrangement started in the first place: of how he’d come to her with an offer, years ago, and how he waited just like this, solid and quiet before her, for her to decide to accept him or not. 

She shuts her eyes, inhales a long breath, and opens her eyes to study him on the exhale.  Yes, he is standing in front of her just as carefully now as he had then, with the stillness to his whole body that is the only sign that there is something more going on underneath his calm exterior.  Beneath his feigned nonchalance, he is tense: Herah knows him well enough now to see how tightly he is holding himself, so that his hands don’t tremble and his voice doesn’t quiver.

It makes her feel powerful, even as her heart threatens to topple her with anticipation and nerves.  Had he been just as tense that first time, when he’d offered himself to her in Skyhold?  Had the nerves been there, only she was not yet familiar enough with his body to notice them? 

What does he fear from her now, to make him so careful with his movements?

She swallows, and looks at the large man standing still before her waiting on her words. 

This is the Iron Bull: her lover and her beloved.  Certainty washes over her.  When she speaks, that feeling steadies her so that her voice doesn’t shake.

“Why tell me now?”

His left hand twitches, as though he wants to touch her.  But he doesn’t allow himself that reprieve.  Instead, he keeps his gaze even on hers.  “Because you need to hear it now,” he says.  His gaze flickers away from her, for just a moment, and then returns.  “Because I need to say it now.”

She wants to smile, but her face feels almost numb.  It’s hard to breathe, so when she does manage to take a breath, her chest aches.  “Do you?” she murmurs, almost an invitation.  Because he’s so still, she takes it upon herself to make the first movement.  She steps forward slowly, deliberately lifting her hands to rest them on the inked tattoos reaching across his chest. 

His skin is warm under her fingertips, but he doesn’t reach for her even when her fingers drift down his chest to linger at his sides.  “Kadan,” he says, nearly inaudibly, and she has the sudden suspicion that the Iron Bull – the Ben-Hassrath spy, the man who plays with words and meanings, the one who always knows what to say and how to say it, this man who fears so little in life – is at a loss for words. 

“Do you know,” she asks him quietly, looking at where her hands rest on his skin, “how long I have loved you?”

Those words finally break his iron-clad self-control.  His hands reach for her, lightning-fast, and in four quick strides Herah finds herself pinned between his body and the wall.  This is familiar, her mind thinks in a daze as he hauls her hands up over her head to pin them in place there while he kisses her.  He presses against her, strong thigh pushed between her legs to help lift her up so that her lips are even with his, and he kisses her like he’s drowning and her mouth is air.

He pulls back just barely enough for her to gasp for breath, and he kisses her face – her chin, her cheeks, her forehead, even her nose – as she pants.  “Tell me,” he orders her, rasping and low.  “I need you to tell me.”

She isn’t a coward.

“I love you,” she says for the first time, and his lips are smiling when he crushes them to hers for another kiss. 

This time, when they break apart, he rests his forehead on hers and laughs.  “Ah, kadan,” he says, and kisses her cheek again, a bare affectionate peck more because he can than because it means anything.  “I love you too.”

For as tender as his words are, when he takes her to bed that gentleness vanishes.  It makes Herah arch up against him, begging for completion; he keeps her still on the bed beneath him not with ties or cuffs but with the strength of his own body.  His hands keep her arms caged over her head, and his weight keeps her legs from thrashing.  She likes that he does not treat her like she’s fragile: she struggles under him and loves knowing that he trusts her to be tough enough to take what he offers her.  His touch is commanding and controlling and insistent, all but demanding that she drown in the rough pleasure he offers her, and Herah comes apart under him.

Iron Bull finishes with a low, heartfelt groan, and Herah wraps her arms and legs – finally freed – around him as his sweat-slick body shudders against her.  His weight, when he carefully lowers himself completely upon her, is not smothering.  Bull is larger than her, yes, dense with well-used muscle and bulk, but Herah does not consider him a burden as he settles atop her.  She likes the short breaths she can take beneath him, the way his stomach moves against her as he struggles to calm his own breathing.  She likes his warmth, and how just lightly brushing her fingers down the bare skin of his back can set him to squirming above her.

She likes his smile when he slips out of her, and how he kisses her when he rolls off of her to lie beside her.

The mundane physical realities of the aftermath are almost a relief, in a way: a chance to get her breath back, to pull herself back together and ground herself in the present.  They clean themselves without comment, and Herah straightens the bedsheets out as Bull manages to put their discarded clothing into some semblance of order.  He lays himself back down on the bed when he’s done and watches her finish up.

She stands naked at the foot of the bed to deal with the candles: a benefit to her magic is that it’s easy for her to concentrate of the elaborate chandelier hanging over the table, until she’s snuffed out every candle in the room except for a single flickering flame remaining on the less ornate chandelier over the bed.

In the dim remaining light, Bull pats the bed beside him.  “Come lie with me, kadan,” he offers, and Herah doesn’t need a second invitation.

It takes them a few moments to become comfortable – horns are not precisely easy to maneuver at times – but they are used to the necessity of careful arrangements.  He wraps her in his arms, hugging her close to his chest, and Herah rests her head on his shoulder.  This is usual, and predictable: they have slept like this together for years, naked and at home with each other.

But Herah can’t quite resist a change to their usual positioning, and she pulls her hand up Bull’s chest from where it usually rests on his stomach.  His skin is smooth under her fingers, puckered with scars but hairless; she doesn’t stop her hand until it rests high on his chest. 

His heart pulses beneath her palm, slow and steady.

“Kadan,” she says, the word still unfamiliar on her tongue. 

She can’t see his expression from where her head is carefully tucked against the crook of his shoulder.  But his words sound wry, amused.  “I wondered,” he says, “if you knew what it really meant.”

“I didn’t.”  She flattens her hand, to better feel his heartbeat.  “As far back as then?” she wonders aloud.

“Mm.”  It’s a thoughtful noise, not quite embarrassed.  “Yeah.  I think so.”

“You think so,” she manages, more stunned than she cares to admit.  “How long have you been in love with me?” she wonders again.

His shoulders shrug – equivocation, not avoidance.  “I don’t know,” he answers, giving her the same response as before.  But his words are slow and warm, and one of his hands drifts up to cover her fingers where they press against his heart.  “I can tell you when I first realized I wanted you, when I first decided I liked you, even when I first knew I was maybe a little too invested in what we had between us.”  His breathing is slow and even.  “I can tell you when I figured out that I was in love with you – but I can’t tell you when it started.  It wasn’t some big moment, or anything like that – it just was, and by the time I figured it out, I had no idea how long I’d already loved you.”

“When did you figure it out?” Herah asks.

He snorts.  “Long before you,” he says, and now he does sound almost embarrassed.

Her scar pulls when she smiles.  “Bull,” she chides him mildly, and kisses his shoulder.  In the darkness, his tattoos are blurred together beneath her lips.  She could press for more, and she is desperately curious, but she respects him enough to grant him his secrets.  “When did I figure it out, then?”

He laughs, low and rolling.  “You figured it out the day you asked me about my watch-word,” he tells her, and he sounds smug.  “But the better question would be when I figured it out and knew you were in love with me.”

She is always amazed at how well he knows her, at how he can turn his Ben-Hassrath training towards reading her and understanding her mind.  Four years ago, it frightened her.  Now, though, she only presses another kiss into his shoulder and tucks herself up a little closer against his body.  “Are you going to tell me?” she asks.

Iron Bull chuckles, turning his head to press a kiss into her hair.  “No,” he says.  “I don’t think so.  Let’s just say that it was a good day for me.”

She laughs despite herself, and shuts her eyes.  “I didn’t want it to change anything,” she says.  “And I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it, even though I sort of figured you’d probably noticed.  So I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” he responds seriously.  “It was enough for me to know it.”  And he’s silent for a long moment, his breathing relaxed, before he offers, “I didn’t want to push you.  I didn’t want to risk losing this.”

It’s Herah’s turn to hum, thoughtful and at peace.  “Nothing has to change,” she quotes back at him.

“Exactly.”  His arm tightens around her. 

She doesn’t want to fall asleep without telling him again, so she says, “I love you, Bull.”

He inhales, long and sharp, but the exhale is slow and satisfied.  “I love you, kadan.”  And, softer, into her hair, he adds, “My heart.”

Her lips curve into a smile, and she barely notices the slight sting of her scar stretching.  “So,” she says.  “We’re still good?”

She loves the short little laugh he gives in response to her words when he likes what she says.  “We’re still good,” he affirms.


	24. Chapter 24

## 23 

She avoids thinking about the Anchor because everyone else just as studiously avoids commenting on it.

It isn’t easy. 

More and more, Herah finds that she has to break away from the middle of a conversation to grit her teeth and grip her arm as the Anchor pulses in her hand.  She bites her lip one morning hard enough to draw blood, and there just isn’t enough time for the wound to heal before the next pulse comes and she accidentally catches her lip once more with her teeth.  So she has to grow used to the bitter copper tang of her own blood on her tongue, and it’s a painful reminder of her own mortality.

She becomes adept at choking back screams, at stumbling to a stop when the pain blinds her to the point where she can’t think enough to move her feet.  She’s getting used to accepting aid from her companions in ways she’d never needed it before: water skins passed to her as she pants for breath after an attack, friendly arms holding her as she shakes, concerned eyes watching her as the Anchor pulses out bright angry light and leaves her wrecked in its wake.

It hurts to think, but Herah grits her teeth and doesn’t allow the pain to distract her from the puzzle she’s untangling.  It hurts to move forward, her hand jangling with discordant and painful chords every step she takes.  It hurts to fight, to lift her staff and call fire with her aching arm.  It even hurts to discharge the Anchor, to let it rip energy free in dangerous, sickly-green pulses.

But Herah is the Inquisitor, and Herah moves forward because if she is going to die, she is going to do so on her feet.

She avoids thinking about that too, and everyone else does the same, with careful forced cheer and deliberate conversational evasions.  There’s an attempt to go on as usual: she journeys through the eluvians, she meets with her advisors, she eats with her friends.  No one says anything about the future, because no one is willing to voice what they all fear.

Then the Anchor flares so bright her whole world is white pain, hot agony pooled in the palm of her hand and streaking up her arm like lightning.  She comes back to herself to see her advisors – her friends – standing before her in a quiet and horrified circle, and Herah knows she cannot hide from the truth any longer.

“I don’t have much time left,” she tells them, speaking the words aloud for the first time, and they rally before her like the leaders they are in their concern for her safety.

She stumbles out of the meeting still somewhat in shock, still dazed by the truth she’s finally admitted out loud.  Her hand continues to sting, burning and aching and itching beneath her skin where the Anchor’s magic is ingrained into her being.

Herah finds the Iron Bull in their room, carefully honing the edge of his axe and clearly waiting for her.

“How’d it go?” he asks as she enters the room, and then as he looks up and sees how tense she is, how drawn her face, he grimaces.  “That bad, huh?” he asks, and puts down his whetstone and axe.

“It went well enough,” Herah says, though she doesn’t protest when he abandons his seat to come over to her and embrace her.  He wraps her up in his arms, and she presses her forehead against his chest and tries to breathe without fear.  She can’t: even Iron Bull can’t guard her from the heartfelt terror she feels at knowing her fate.

She didn’t ask for this, she thinks in a sudden burst of panic: she never wanted ancient magics sewn into her skin.  She never wanted to lead the Inquisition, to hold the fate of the world in her palm. 

She wanted to be a mercenary, she tells herself savagely, gulping in a breath.  She wanted to see more of the world, to be renowned for her magic and liked for her companionship.  And yes, she’s done that: the Herah Adaar who was a simple farmer’s daughter has become all that she once dreamed of being and more.

But it’s not enough.

She wants to travel, to relax, to live long enough to retire.  She wants to visit Dorian and see Tevinter, to go to Kirkwall to see the shithole Varric loves, to run across rooftops with Sera and cookies. 

She wants to work with the Chargers, to wake up besides Bull every morning, to see what she can do with her life outside of the Inquisition.  She wants to be happy, to figure out how she and Bull can handle this newly acknowledged love between them.  She wants to see the world again without the threat of doom upon it.

She doesn’t want to die.  Not yet.

Her eyes are hot, and she knows she’s on the verge of tears.  Her breath is shaky, so that when she turns and pulls away from Iron Bull, his hands are reluctant to release her while she’s obviously in distress.  Still, he lets her go, and she strides over to the window to stare out at the setting sun and blink back tears.

“I was thinking,” she says, and she’s proud of how calm her voice sounds, how unafraid, how serene, “when we’re done with this mess here, I was thinking I’d like to travel with the Chargers for a while.”

“Yeah?”  Bull doesn’t sound skeptical, merely thoughtful.  “You don’t think the Inquisition’s going to need you around anymore?”

She snorts.  “I don’t think there’s going to _be_ an Inquisition anymore,” she says, because that much is true.  “Unless something dramatic happens tomorrow, the Council is going to demand we disband, and I don’t see a good enough reason to fight that.”  Her eyes are still dry for all her heart aches at that thought.  She risks a glance back to see Iron Bull standing, arms crossed where he watches her.  “So.  You have an opening in the Chargers for a Vashoth mage?”  And she forces herself to make a joke.  “I’m pretty sure Krem will vouch for me.”

“Sure,” he says mildly, instantly, without so much as flinching.  “If that means we’ll stay together, I’m good with it.”  He steps up behind her, quietly, and uncrosses his arms to touch her shoulder.  “Though they might demote me, if you come on board – they like you better.”

That makes her laugh, a short bark of mirth that surprises her.  “Herah’s Chargers,” she says.  “That’s got a ring to it.”

“Hey, hey,” he protests, grinning.  “Don’t get any ideas, kadan.  But you know you’ve always got a spot with the Chargers.”

“Good,” she says, and hauls in a breath.  “I want to stay with you, Bull, when this whole mess is over.  For as long as I can.”

“I’ve been thinking on that, actually,” he adds, with a hint of his usual humor.  “Something we could do once we’re done here.”

“Yeah?”  And that does cheer Herah up.  The fact that he’s thinking ahead – that he’s not looking at her as a woman who will die, as someone who doesn’t have a future – brings a smile to her face, banishes the threat of tears.  “Tell me.”

“Well,” he says with a shrug.  “Krem’s being a pain in the ass about this, and says I’m being a stupid Qunari for not bringing it up – so, if you wanted, we could get married when this whole mess is over.”

She stares up at him in stunned and horrified shock.  Instantly, full and complete, the realization of why he’s making the offer crashes into her.

_He thinks I’m going to die._

Herah’s heart plummets to her feet, taking her happiness with it, and all she can do is look up at him.  “Married?” she manages through her devastation, and the truth behind his offer topples the slight strength she’d built up over the past few minutes.  Tears which she’d successfully avoided before prick at her eyes, and when she blinks, the first teardrop slides free.  More follow, but she’s too stunned to track them.

She takes a step backwards, shaking her head, and tries to take another, to turn and flee, but the Iron Bull is faster.  He grabs for her wrists and pulls her back to him.  She doesn’t have the energy to resist, so instead she rests her forehead on the skin of his chest and sobs until her broken heart is empty.

If even the Iron Bull thinks that the Anchor will kill her, then there’s no escaping the truth.  Her time is short, and there is nothing she can do to stop it.  Herah turns her face into his skin and cries for the confirmation of all her fears.

“Well,” he says softly, when her sobs have turned to whimpers, when she sniffs and tries to compose herself.  “That was not quite the reaction I expected.”

Herah is too drained to be more than mildly embarrassed.  She pushes herself away from his chest – he lets her go, but barely, only to the point where his arms are loose around her back and there’s air between their bodies again.  She scrubs at her face with her hands, trying to regain composure for the conversation they are surely about to have, and then decides, as usual, that blunt honesty is her best option.

“Bull,” she says carefully, and though she’s sure she’s cried every tear she has left to give, she has to swallow more down before she can compose herself enough to continue.  “Bull.”  And she takes a deep breath, and touches her hands to his chest above his heart.  Her next words are a statement rather than a question, the truth she’d found in his offer.  “You think I’m going to die.  You think this is going to kill me.”

Something dark slides across his face, troubled and fearful and broken, and his hands tighten on her hips.  His mouth opens, as though to deny her words, and then his head drops.  His eye shuts, and his head bows forward on his neck as though he’s lost the strength to lift it.  “Yeah,” he admits brokenly.  “I do.”

She has never seen him defeated before, and the sight frightens her as much as his confirmation does.  She hugs him fiercely, trying to draw strength from his powerful frame, and he clutches her against him in return, holding her so tightly her feet lift from the ground.

“I don’t want to lose you, kadan,” he whispers into her skin. 

“I don’t want to go,” she says back, and finds that she has more tears to shed after all.

It’s a long night, and neither of them speak or sleep much.  Herah curls up in his arms in the bed and listens to his heart beneath her ear.  He strokes his hand through her hair, from her scalp down to her shoulders, over and over in a rhythm as steady as his breathing.  She kisses him, tender and fierce and sweet, and he holds her when she hunches over her hand and screams with pain.

Only when the sun rises do they stir from the bed.  The Iron Bull helps to dress her, as her left hand is all but numb from tingling pain: she stands still and obedient as he drapes her antaam-saar across her torso, and she lets his bigger rough fingers carefully smooth and tie off the cords where they loop across her arms and waist.

He kisses her again, calloused fingers soft on her cheeks as he cradles her face in his hands, before they move to leave their room.  “I had hoped you wouldn’t see how afraid I am,” he apologizes as he lets her go.  “You needed me to be strong for you, to not believe you were in trouble, and I couldn’t do it.  I’m sorry.”

He sounds unhappy, and Herah’s bruised heart aches for how very hard he tried to take care of her, for how frightened he must be beneath his bluster, for how he’d been willing to smother his fear to better support her.  “It’s not your fault,” she assures him, taking his hands and bringing them to her lips to press a kiss onto each of them.  She smiles at him, and though her smile is small and faltering, it’s at least an honest one.  “I appreciate how much you were willing to do to keep me happy.”  And, when he looks perplexed, she clarifies, “Bringing up marriage and everything.”

He snorts, but a grin is twitching at the corner of his mouth by his scar.  “Krem kept harping on about it,” he admits.  “And then he got Sera started in on it, and Blackwall – Rainier – came by, and it was just a lot of glaring about me being too Qunari to get it.”  He looks down at her, eye amused but still serious.  “I didn’t bring it up because I think you’re dying and want to let you die happy, kadan,” he says clearly.  “I brought it up because you’re Vashoth, and I know a lot of Vashoth believe in marriage as the best way to show commitment.  And if you want that from me, I’m willing to give it.”

Herah is stunned.  “I…”  And she has to stop, to think her response through.  “I figured you only offered because you thought I was dying,” she says at last, stroking her hand down his arm to soothe the annoyed glance he gives her at that.  “I didn’t actually think you were serious.  You’re the Iron Bull – you don’t do marriage.”

Bull shrugs, the twitch of his shoulders that he uses to cover up embarrassment.  “Serious enough, if you want it,” he admits.  And, perhaps seeing the surprise on her face, he adds, “Look, this is enough for me, kadan.”  He takes her hand, and places it on his chest, over the dragon’s tooth she carved for him years earlier.  “I don’t need words or a ceremony or anything like that to know I’m yours.  But if having any of that would make you happy, then it’s easy – we make you happy.”

“I…”  And for a second time, Herah pauses what she might have said.  She blows out a breath.  “I don’t know.  I never actually thought – I don’t know.”  Cautiously, trying not to insult him, she adds, “I never figured it was even an option with you, Bull.  I never really thought about it.  I’ll need time to wrap my brain around it.”

“Fair enough,” he agrees amiably, and then his eye sharpens as realization hits.  He smiles at her ruefully, regret and humor blurring together.  “That’s how you figured it out.  You never thought I’d bring up marriage, so if I did, it was only because I figured you were dying and it wouldn’t matter much in the long run.”

It’s hardly a flattering assumption, but it’s true enough.  Herah grimaces.  “Something like that,” she admits. 

He shakes his head.  “I’m only going to say this once,” he says soberly, “because I don’t want to think about it.  But, kadan – losing you?  Losing you is going to _wreck_ me.”  His voice shakes, nearly cracks; Herah reaches for him almost automatically.  He heaves out a breath, shuts his eyes as her hands touch him.  “It’s not like marriage or whatever else we get up to between now and then will change that.  So yeah, don’t go thinking that this doesn’t matter to me in the long run.  Because you’re all that matters.”

Herah doesn’t know what to say to him, because this isn’t something she can fix: her Anchor isn’t getting better, and she truly doesn’t know how much time she has left.  She’s fighting their own people – real Qunari, their own race, at least – and tracking down the ancient Elven god of rebellion; the politicians are tearing apart the Inquisition she helped to build even as she struggles to prevent the Qunari from killing them all.

She can’t fix everything, and these days it feels like she can’t even fix anything.  And she won’t be around to comfort him when it will matter most, when she’s gone and this strong proud man is all alone in the aftermath without her.  So she steps forward, further into Bull’s embrace, and lets him squeeze her close to him and hold her for as long as he can.

There are tears in her eyes when the palace bells sound the hour, forcing them apart.  She thinks there might be tears lurking in his eye, too, but he’s harder to read.  “Well,” she says.  “I love you.”

“I love you,” he says back to her, and kisses her.  He releases her on a sigh.  “Ready to finish this, kadan?”

She inhales the scent of him, leather and vitaar and clean skin, and locks it away somewhere in her heart to grant her strength for the time when it will matter most.  She looks up at his face one last time, battered and familiar and beloved, and her scar stretches when she forces her lips into a smile.

“Just try to keep up, kadan,” she forces herself to say lightly, and at least her levity has the reward of his laughter when he bends down to kiss her one final time. 

She hoards the sounds of his laugh with how he smells and the feel of his lips against hers, the salty taste of his skin and the pressure of his fingers on her waist.  She stores everything she loves about him away, filling her heart to the brim with how much she cares for him, and keeps his hand in hers when they walk the halls of the palace.

His fingers against hers grant her courage, and he only releases her hand when they reach the last doorway.  Still, her hand is warm from his touch, and so when Herah finds herself at the eluvian again with her friends at her back and her too-short future ahead of her, she’s able to smile at the somber faces waiting for her there.

“Well,” she says to her friends when they look to her for leadership.  “Shall we?”

And Herah lifts her chin and strides forward one last time towards the unknown.


	25. Epilogue

## Epilogue

Her hand doesn’t hurt.

Mostly because it is missing, of course: her arm now ends abruptly just before where her elbow would have started.  But Herah is a mercenary, and she’s seen amputations before.  The fact that her arm doesn’t hurt at all is puzzling.  It’s strange and almost entirely unbelievable when she thinks about it, compared to everything else she knows about missing limbs.

A final gift from Solas, she thinks on her better days, remembering how the apostate’s healing spells and barriers had always felt pure and strong as they granted peace and protection.  A relief from the Anchor, she thinks on her worse days, raging against the loss of part of herself and the magic which had set her apart from others.

She is not entirely sure if she’s relieved to have lost the Anchor or not.  She’s happy to be alive – thrilled, really, light-hearted and dizzy with relief and practically floating in her gladness at living – but at the same time she is mourning the loss of more than just her arm.  She’d borne the Anchor for four years, and for most of those years it had not been a painful burden.  It had shaped her into the Inquisitor, and burned away the dross keeping her from all she was capable of.  It had set her apart and lifted her up, made her into her true self, and to lose it is almost as difficult as losing the hand that she’d been born with.

But her arm doesn’t hurt anymore, for all most of it is gone.  There is no lingering pain in her stump, as the healers had cautioned her would be likely.  There is no phantom pain from where her mind might struggle with the absence of her hand, no ghostly after-image of her arm to feel hot or cold or pinched despite the fact that it is no longer there.

Instead, it’s as though her arm has simply vanished, taking the pain and burden and uniqueness of the Anchor with it.

It leaves Herah with a clear head, which she is grateful for, and the ability to leap right back into things without needing time for recovery.  It’s dramatic, too, which she’s practical enough to take advantage of: her missing arm, she thinks fiercely, leaves little doubt as to how much she has sacrificed to save this world.

She orders the end of the Inquisition without blinking, and for all she’s sorry to see the era come to an end, she’s at peace with the decision.  There’s still work to be done, of course – she will never have a boring life; of that she’s utterly sure – but the work will be done as it should be, by those she can trust.  She will not ask nameless scouts and spies to fight and die in her place and in her name.  She will do what needs to be done herself, with those she knows personally.  She will pay whatever the price is in her own blood, and not with the blood of others. 

She is sorry to see the Inquisition go – the livery and the soldiers, the comradeship and the faith she doesn’t truly understand.  But ending the Inquisition feels like taking off a heavy pack after a long march: her shoulders roll, sturdy and free, with no burden left for them to carry.

She is stronger for carrying the Inquisition for so long, she knows.  And she no longer fears the weight of the world upon her: she knows she can bear that particular burden without flinching.  But it is something like seeing the sun again after being so long in the dark to set aside the title of Inquisitor and all the chaos and fear that went with it.

It is one thing to be rid of the trappings of the Inquisition: the honor guard, the uniforms, the ambassadors and dignitaries, the constant reports and the stream of information.  It’s another entirely to say farewell to friends and companions without knowing when – if – she’ll see them again.

They leave Orlais as they came to it, singly and in pairs.  Cassandra, of course, stays, and extends an invitation which is very nearly a demand for Herah to stay until she is completely recovered.  Cassandra’s definition of recovered, of course, is more stringent than Herah’s, but Herah finds she doesn’t mind the concern in the other woman’s steely gaze.  It gives her time to clear her head, to process what has happened, to say goodbye to what she needs to leave behind.

It gives her time to say goodbye to friends, which is in many ways harder.

Too, her stay in the Divine’s palace gives her time to adjust to her new self.  There’s relief at living, of course, but there’s anger at the method.  Her hand, she rages as she mourns, her arm, her fingers: parts of her that are gone forever.  She has lost her arm and her army, and she mourns both in different ways.  Just because both were painless does not mean either were easy, and the adjustment is not swift.

Her arm doesn’t hurt, but her heart does: it aches for what she’s lost, what she’s ruined, what she’s giving up.  It weeps with lost potential, with righteous indignation, with immense and utter frustration at the politics which force her to act as she must.  It mourns her lost arm, her missing hand, the fingers she’ll never see again – because while the loss might not have been painful, she is still left without part of herself.

She still reaches for things with her left arm, even though it no longer has a hand at the end of it.  Her balance is thrown off when she turns too swiftly, and she falls sometimes when she tries to catch herself with a hand that isn’t there any longer.  Her staff is awkward in a single grip, and it takes effort to learn how to spin it and cast magic with just her right hand.

She can’t manage the knots and cords of antaam-saar on her own, and has to ask Bull to help her dress every morning.  It’s humiliating and frustrating to attempt on her own, to struggle with something she’d done so easily nearly every day of her adult life. 

She can relearn much with just one hand: how to brush her hair and how to clean herself, how to wield her sword and staff and how to ride, how to eat and how to work with books and parchment.  But she can’t get dressed in her usual clothing anymore without assistance, and for all the Iron Bull is quick to offer his help, she has to grit her teeth past a slick burn of shame and annoyance and regret at her own helplessness every morning as he ties the silk at her back and loops the cords around her arms.  Perhaps one day, she thinks, she will see it as the kindness it is: his touch gentle on her skin, his blunt fingers deft and swift with the knots of the cords.  But it is hard for her not to resent her need for his aid every morning, and only his obvious pride in his ability to dress her to her old standards keeps the moment from becoming bitter.

His entirely enthusiastic delight in helping her shed the garment each evening is easier to bear, because that has not changed from how it was before.  He does not hesitate to take her back to bed, even with her arm missing, and Herah is relieved to find that he doesn’t care that she’s less than whole.  He’s gentle with her while she recovers, and rougher with her when she’s ready for it.  Compared to the awkward glances and pitying comments she receives from others, Herah appreciates even more Bull’s complete acceptance of her new self and his instant validation that her old self – tough and strong and worth loving – is still present.

The only way he lets her missing arm affect their time together is when he muses on how to best secure it when he wants to tie her down.  That the Iron Bull can look at it so practically, accepting it and working with it and adapting to the change, gives Herah the strength she didn’t know she needed to do the same.

In the end, though, Herah can’t stay in Orlais forever.

It’s frightening, in a way, to leave.  In Halamshiral, everyone knows who she is and what she was.  She’s never cast off a name before, and doesn’t quite know how to abandon the title of Inquisitor.  Cole’s words come back to her, out of a dim memory from years earlier around a watch fire: _you collect them, carry them, layers that go deep, back and back and back._

So Herah tucks being Inquisitor away, burying it with the other titles she’s used over the years.  Inquisitor and Herald are set aside, just as Captain’s Pet and Lieutenant and all her other nicknames were set aside: part of her history and heritage, there to strengthen her but no longer to define her.  That iron collar of war no longer chokes her.

She is only Herah Adaar now, even if Herald and Inquisitor are carried in her shadow, and it is as Herah Adaar that she stops by to visit Krem the day before the Chargers are slated to leave Orlais.

“Do you have a moment?” she asks, and the Tevinter lieutenant looks up from scraps of parchment and paperwork with relief.

“ _Please_ ,” he says with feeling.  “We’re leaving tomorrow and if I have to see one more requisition I’m going to hit something.”

“Oh,” Herah says, and winces despite herself.  “I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to do more paperwork.”

Krem groans, and covers his face with his hands.  “Not you too,” he gripes.  “First the Chief, then Sapper, now you… All right, what is it?”

She takes a breath.  “I want to join the Chargers,” she says, and snaps her mouth shut afterwards to cut off the explanations she feels almost obligated to give.

Krem’s hands drop.  “Oh, that,” he says, and in an instant his demeanor has changed, from despairing to cheerful.  “I’ve got all that paperwork done already, here, just give me a second…”

He turns to rummage through the piles on his desk, and Herah shakes her head in confusion.  “Already?” she asks.  “But I just –”

“Chief stopped by this morning,” Krem explains, finding the right piece of parchment and producing it with a flourish.  “So that’s not more paperwork, that’s finishing up what’s already on my desk.  That’s tolerable.”

He sets the parchment down on a clear spot of the desk, and plops down a quill and inkwell next to it.  “It’s the usual contract,” he tells her, businesslike and brief, “with a bit more words thrown in for your role, here and here, and the usual stuff about ransom and duties and rotations, and your share of the profit is here.”  His finger stabs the paper in a few different places, pointing out what he’s talking about.  “No surprises, really – just sign your name at the bottom there and we’re good to go.”

Herah glances over the contract, skimming across the familiar words at the top, and then she stops.  “No surprises,” she repeats, incredulously.  “Krem, this isn’t a regular contract.”

Krem looks almost offended.  “Sure it is,” he says.  “The Iron Bull came down himself and we checked it over specially – it’s just like his.”

“But he’s the Captain of the Chargers,” she specifies.  “I’m just joining the Chargers.”

“Er, yeah, about that, kadan,” Bull’s voice interrupts, and Herah turns to see him standing in the doorway, a smile twitching on his lips.  “Krem and I had a talk about that, and we really think this is the better way to do it.”

“They’re _your_ Chargers,” Herah insists, looking down at the paper in front of her.  “This is a second captain’s contract.  You don’t need a second captain – and in any case, that spot should be Krem’s before it’s mine.”

“Oh, no,” Krem protests, and he lifts both hands, looking at his chief.  “You leave me out of this.” 

“Krem doesn’t want it yet,” Bull explains mildly.  “So think of this as a stepping-stone for him, if you like.  The Chargers get used to two captains, and when one of us bows out, Krem can step in without any problems.”

“The Chargers are yours,” Herah repeats, and feels tension gathering at the base of her horns.  “I wanted to join them, Bull, not try to take them over.”

“Adaar’s Chargers,” Krem muses.  “Has a ring to it.”  And, at the dual glares directed his way, he ducks his head.  “Right, staying out of it.”

“You’re not taking them over,” Iron Bull says patiently, stepping out of the doorway to come stand beside her at Krem’s desk.  “You’re just going to be working to lead them with me, instead of under me.”  And humor colors his voice; he winks at her.  “I’ve got you under me enough on our own time.”

“Ugh,” Krem says.

Herah looks down at the contract.  “What’s the real reason?” she asks after a brief pause.  She glances up at Bull to see a brief hint of chagrin flicker across his face.  “Come on, Bull – what’s the real reason behind this?”

“Hm.”  He grimaces, and then rubs the back of his head.  “Well.  There’s actually four reasons.”

“Four?” she repeats, her voice a bit higher than usual.  She crosses her arms.  “Talk.”

“Four reasons, kadan.  First, you’ve been the Inquisitor, and I can’t put you beneath me in the order of things – for politics and for safety.  I can’t have people questioning who they’re supposed to listen to, looking to you and listening to me or vice versa.  They need to know that they can take orders from either of us.  And the politicians can’t think that I’ve been the boss of you all along.”  His hand drops, gestures at the paper.  “Second, you’ve been the Inquisitor.”  Good humor creeps into his tone as he repeats himself.  “You’ve got the experience, and you’ve got the skill for it.  You sign on like this, and the Chargers are as much yours as mine – and you’re a good leader.  You take care of what’s yours.  You’ll do right by the Chargers.”

Herah twists her mouth unhappily, but can’t argue either statement.  As though he knows he’s winning, Iron Bull grins at her.  “Third,” he drawls, “if you’re a captain, you’re independent.  You could, say, leave the Chargers if there was something up north you wanted to investigate, and you wouldn’t need my permission to do so.”

Solas, Herah thinks, and her lips press into a thin line.

“And fourth,” Bull finishes, reaching out to take her chin in his fingers, “is because I want it to be this way.”

That is the only one of his four real reasons she can really argue with, so she latches on to it.  “Oh, you do, do you?” she asks, syrupy sweet and seething.  “Well, you can just-”

He kisses her, swift as a snake striking from the grass.  He sweeps her up against him and bends her practically in half as he does, turning the kiss into a dramatic dip that she can’t fight without completely losing her balance.  She tries anyway, and fails; he laughs against her lips and sweeps her completely off her feet, holding her like a bride in his arms as he kisses her.

“Let me give you this,” he tells her softly, still holding her once he’s finished kissing her.  Then he grins at her.  “Sign the damn contract, kadan.  Stop arguing with me on this.”

Her head is happily buzzing from the kisses.  He carries her easily, comfortable with her weight; the stump of her left arm is trapped between their bodies, and he shows no discomfort at the clear reminder of what she lacks.  “Set me down,” she orders.

“No,” he says serenely.  “You’re not my boss anymore, you know.  And if you’re trying to sign into my merc band as my subordinate, I can do what I want.”

She glares at him.

“Of course,” he continues, unperturbed, “if you signed your contract, we’d be equal in the Chargers, and I’d have to listen to your suggestions.”

Herah struggles more because she wants to feel his arms tighten around her than because she expects to escape.  She isn’t winning this argument, she realizes, and there’s a lightness in her heart at that thought which makes the prospect of defeat not so terrible.  So she turns to Krem, who has a single eyebrow raised in amusement as he watches them, and asks, “Are you really all right with this?”

“Yes,” Krem says instantly.  “Chief talked it over with us, and we like the idea of it.  Besides,” and he smiles up at her.  “We’re used to you being in charge already, and maybe with you around, the Chief will be in a better mood more often.”

“Is that so,” Herah drawls out, glancing up at Bull, incredibly touched to hear that he’s discussed this with his people in advance but unwilling to say so aloud.

“Yeah,” Krem says, his professional mask slipping just a bit.  “And it’d be less work on me, so, really, I’m all for it.  We could use you, Your Worship.”

She sighs.  “I’m not ‘your worship’ anymore, Krem,” she reminds him.  She wiggles again, and looks up at her lover’s face.  “You’ll have to put me down so I can sign the contract.”

“Not a chance, kadan,” Bull says cheerfully.  Instead, he steps forward, and without apparent effort, leans over the desk so the inkpot is in her reach.  “You can manage from here.  Less chance of you retaliating against me afterwards this way.”

She groans, but reaches forward, takes the quill from the inkpot with her one remaining hand, and without reading the rest of the contract, carefully signs her name in neat lettering at the bottom of the page.

Krem takes the paper from her, fanning it out to dry the ink as Iron Bull swings her back up away from the desk.  Once the ink is set, Krem countersigns the contract, his handwriting spiky and somehow very much Tevinter, and then glances at her name.  “Herah Adaar – I didn’t know you had a name besides Adaar, actually,” he adds, sounding surprised.  He looks back up at her with a faint grin.  “Anyway.  Welcome to the Chargers, Herah Adaar.”

“Thank you, Cremisius Aclassi,” Herah says with as much dignity as she can muster, given that she’s still held tightly in Iron Bull’s arms and thus being carried several feet up off the ground.

Krem smirks at her.  “Well, at least one of you can get the name right,” he says.  Then he cocks his head slightly, and asks, “What do you want us to call you?”

“What do you mean?” she responds rather dubiously.

Krem looks a little flustered.  “Well, I’ve been calling you Adaar, but if your name’s Herah – and we can’t call you Your Worship now, and Inquisitor’s out, and the Iron Bull’s already Chief…”

Bull’s laugh echoes around her, from where she’s cradled in her arms, and Herah inhales a sharp surprised breath.

She only has one title remaining for who she is now, she thinks.  Just kadan, and that is not for anyone but Iron Bull to use.  She is not Herald or Inquisitor; she is not Retha-ah or Recruit; she is none of the names she has held in between.  Those names are not gone, precisely, but neither are they wholly accurate any longer.  They’re all there, somewhere, simmering inside of her, ready to be drawn on for strength and support.  They define and shape her, harness her to all she was and all she can be: they whisper around her throat, as light as a breath on her skin.

She’s leaned on her titles, she thinks.  She’s needed them.  Herah Adaar alone would not have been strong enough to bear everything without them.  The titles have made it all possible: they’ve been the yokes she sets her shoulders to so that she can bear the burdens she must carry.  They’ve shaped her beneath their weight, like how a sculptor’s tools shape stone.  Like how a smith, she thinks, shapes a sword: beaten and burned into something deadly and effective and beautiful.

A hard road, she marvels.  A hard road, and a long road, and the destination she has come to at the end of it is not one that she expected when she started out.  She has been shaped and built by her titles: a stone under a chisel, a sword in a forge.  In the end, though, what shapes her does not define her.  A sculpture does not need the chisel that created it, nor the sword the tools that forged it.

_Kadan_ , her dragon’s tooth necklace murmurs in the soft tones Bull uses to show his love.  _Inquisitor_ , thunders the collar wrought of war, voice diminished without the Inquisition behind it.  _Herald_ , sings the slight thread of faith, faded with the truth of the Fade.  Earlier names whisper to her: older collars, older titles, yokes worn smooth and soft with the weight of years, comfortable across her shoulders.  She is all of them and none of them, and she tucks them all away knowing she can wear them again whenever she needs them.

Kadan is all she keeps, close to her heart and private, and it is enough.

She pictures a sword emerging bright and new from the forge, and her smile is radiant.  _Katoh_ , she thinks: complete and perfect.

_This is who I am,_ she realizes, with the Iron Bull’s arms wrapped tight around her, and so she laughs, free and pure.

“I’m Herah,” she says to Krem.  “You can call me whatever you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I skipped a whole lot of things in this fic, something I’m not entirely sure was the correct decision. Notably, I skipped straight over Herah and Iron Bull meeting for the first time, and all of Haven. I have also left it deliberately vague as to who Herah left in charge of Orlais at the Winter Palace, and I barely touched upon Morrigan’s existence, much less the decision that had to be made in the Arbor Wilds. The actual main plot to Trespasser is barely even mentioned.
> 
> Actually, in general, the main plot to pretty much THE ENTIRE GAME is barely mentioned, and then only vaguely.
> 
> Still, while those omissions were perhaps questionable, they were deliberate: we all know the story of the Inquisitor. We’ve all played out that story in the game. This is the story of my particular Herah and her relationship with the Iron Bull, and so I focused on that. The other bits are of course important to the main game’s storyline, but frankly don’t have much impact on the Herah/Bull story. So they were glossed over in this fic: I assume it all happened in the background, off-screen. I only focused on the bits I was interested in so that I could enjoy the Herah/Bull storyline in full.
> 
> Luckily, I assume that my readers are familiar with what I left out, as we’re all here out of a love of the original source. This allows me to skim through bits of the game unimportant to Herah and Iron Bull’s relationship without too much guilt.
> 
> I sometimes second-guess the decision about leaving out that first meeting on the Storm Coast, or any of their discussions in Haven, but overall, I’m very pleased with how this story interacts with the overall plot of Inquisition. I’m also ridiculously pleased with how this story turned out in general. 
> 
> When I started writing this, it was something of a lark. I’d enjoyed playing my Herah Adaar, and I had been pleasantly surprised to enjoy the Iron Bull romance so much. (My default Inquisitor is a female rogue Trevelyan who romances Cullen, so it’s fair to say this play-through was a departure from my usual.) I decided to write out their relationship, because I’d built so many interesting head-canons for my Herah and Bull that I wanted a place to keep them all straight.
> 
> Roughly 75,000 words later… Yeah, I think it’s safe to say I was carried away. 
> 
> This story is complete. I really enjoyed writing it, and I’m ridiculously proud of it. Originally, I was hoping to write the epilogue from Bull’s POV, but I just couldn’t make that work – so perhaps there will be a one-shot or short fic from his perspective someday, because that’s just a fun idea, but as it stands, Shifts is over. I do have some notes from this story posted over in my tumblr, if you’re interested in some of the head-canons and thoughts about Herah and Bull that just didn’t quite make it into the fic.
> 
> I never did like the title, but it was all I could come up with, and it’s grown a little on me, at least.
> 
> You can always find me on tumblr at veritysays.tumblr.com, where I welcome any discussions or questions about this fic or the characters. There was much I wanted to include here that just didn’t fit or work its way in, so feel free to head over to my tumblr if you’re interested in asking about it.
> 
> Thank you for the kind comments and the kudos and the recommendations that you all have left for this fic. To see so much interest in it has really delighted me, and I am very grateful to those of you who have taken the time to share your appreciation and enjoyment of this fic. The comments I’ve received here have been very kind, and the specific responses I’ve received have both aided me as a writer and genuinely made my day. Seeing notifications of comments or kudos here always makes me happy.


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